Our client was a doting father to a two year old boy. Following a sudden and acrimonious split with his now ex-partner, he found himself on the other side of an interim Family Violence Restraining Order and separated from his son.
Despite having obtained the FVRO for her benefit, the ex-partner continued to text and call our client with various demands, such as fixing her car, delivering her take-away dinner, and purchasing vapes. On some occasions our client foolishly fell into her trap and on other occasions our client was desperate to know of his son’s welfare.
Our client was later arrested and charged with having breaching the Order 52 times. Our client was terrified about the prospect of having 52 convictions recorded against him, which would be detrimental to his employment. He had already received the benefit of 3 prior spent conviction orders, which added to his concern about the repercussions of this series of offending.
We entered into negotiations with the prosecution, inviting them to consider combining the 52 charges into 3 charges and discontinuing the remaining 49 charges. Our written submission focused on the nature of the relationship, the context of the communications, and how our proposal could strike the right balance amongst competing considerations.
We were ultimately successful in persuading the prosecution to deal with the breaches in the manner we proposed. At sentencing, 49 charges were discontinued, and pleas of guilty were entered to the remaining 3 representative charges. We presented a plea in mitigation on behalf of our client and made an application for spent conviction orders with respect to the charges.
After hearing our submissions, a mere $200.00 global fine was imposed and, over opposition from the prosecution, a spent conviction order was granted for all charges.
