Nathaniel Roberts: Morwell pizza delivery driver appeals sentence

A pizza delivery worker who impregnated a 15-year-old child has appealed his prison sentence on the grounds it was too harsh - because of the victim’s age, a court heard.

Morwell man Nathaniel Roberts, 27, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years jail with a non-parole period of three years in the County Court last year after he pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16.

Roberts was 24 at the time of the offending, which occurred in August 2020, and the victim, who cannot be identified, was 15.

Barrister Joe Connolly, for Roberts, told the Court of Appeal on Tuesday that “in so far as a child can give consent, she did”, and said the victim had shown “more than acquiescence” in the pair’s sexual relationship.

He told Justices Karin Emerton and Terence Forrest that there had been an absence of grooming, no force, nor any “overbearing” of will involved in the pair’s sexual relationship, which he said was “relatively short.”

Robyn Harper, for the Crown, said the maximum penalty Roberts faced was 15 years, with the sentence handed down 33 per cent of that maximum penalty.

Ms Harper said the aggravating factor in the offending was Roberts’ ejaculation inside the victim, which had caused her pregnancy.

She said the crime was “particularly serious,” and told the court that the sentence imposed was “clearly not outside the range.”

“The consequences were significant,” Ms Harper said.

According to a written prosecution summary released by the County Court, Edwards and the victim met at a house in Traralgon in August 2020, with a sexually relationship beginning between the pair shortly after.

The summary said Roberts had been told by the victim, who returned to his house on multiple occasions to stay with him after their first meeting, that she was only 15, and said the pair had discussed the age difference a number of times.

“What happens if, like, people start finding out about all this shit,” Roberts says in the summary, as well as expressing a concern about people “going to the cops” because she was not 16.

In late September that year the victim told her mother that she was afraid she might be pregnant, which was confirmed in early October, and also told her mother that the father was around 25 years old.

After initially advising the victim that he wanted her to have an abortion but maintaining he would support her, Roberts eventually ended the relationship with the victim.

In his sentencing of Roberts last year, County Court Judge Michael McInerney said the sexual intercourse was “willing in the sense the victim was a willing participant.”

But Judge McInerney said the legislation was designed to protect young children, and at law there could be no consent.

He said the restriction of having a child at a young age, which the victim described in her victim impact statement, as “exactly the restrictions which form the basis” for parliament passing the legislation.

Justices Emerton and Forrest reserved their decision.

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