Sexual predator loses appeal
HE WOULD burn a Bundaberg schoolboy's nipple with a cigarette lighter if he refused to have sex.
He would punch his victim in the face if his toast was cold or he spilt water on the floor.
The predator would use a broom to hit the teen around the legs if he swept the house incorrectly.
The Bundaberg dance instructor and amateur boxer, who cannot be named to protect the identities of his victims, has lost an appeal against his 14-year jail term.
The man, who was aged 29 and 30 at the time, has a history of sodomising young boys - as young as eight, nine, 11 and 12 - while he was a dance instructor.
He was a reportable sex offender prohibited from having unsupervised contact with children when he repeatedly raped an "extremely vulnerable" teenage boy in 2009 and 2010.
The man was found guilty of five counts of rape and assaulting the boy, who was aged 17 and 18, with a cigarette lighter after a trial in Bundaberg District Court.
The teen had argued he did not consent to anal sex because the man had exercised authority over him, using force, threats, intimidation and assaults.
The teen accused the man of forcing him to have sex up to six times a day while they were living together, flogging or burning him if he would not have sex with him.
One witness told the trial the man treated his victim "like his wife", giving him orders to make him toast, get him a beer and get him cigarettes.
The boy claimed the man threatened to hurt his family, mainly his grandmother, if he wanted, or tried, to run away.
The accused man claimed he was in a loving relationship with the boy who only turned on him because he was embarrassed by his sexual preference and was under pressure from his family to make complaints.
He appealed his conviction and sentence in the Court of Appeal, arguing the jury verdicts were not reasonable and that a miscarriage of justice had occurred.
Justice Hugh Fraser, in delivering a judgment yesterday said this was not a straightforward case but the jury did not have to give credence to the accused's story.
He said the jury was entitled to reject the accused's proposition the charges were attributable to a young man confused about his sexuality, trying to keep a homosexual relationship with an older man from his disapproving family.
