A serial child-sex predator has received a suspended jail term after pleading guilty to the sexual abuse of two Braybrook brothers.
Bryan Reed, 86, was served a three-year sentence suspended for two years over the buggery of the two young brothers between 1977 and 1980, when they were aged just 11 and nine.
The County Court’s Judge Claire Quin took a swipe at Victoria Police for a delay of almost 20 years in prosecuting Reed, who has dozens of convictions for child molestation stretching over almost 60 years.
The court heard that Reed, who is now in a nursing home, had befriended the Braybrook brothers when they were very young, offering them swimming lessons. He was alleged to have fondled the boys in the pool during their lessons, later raping them in his home. When one of the victims told his father of the offence he was “beaten to nearly an inch” of his life.
In court, Reed traced his offending back to the physical and sexual violence he experienced at St John’s Home for Boys in Canterbury between the ages of 6 and 11. “You were lonely, abused, afraid and unhappy as a little boy,” said Judge Quin. Reed had been jailed for two years without parole in 1996 after pleading guilty to 31 acts of indecent assault relating to seven different boys aged between 8 and 12.
He had been convicted of indecent assault on four other occasions in 1948, 1969 and 1978.
Judge Quin criticised the delay in the latest charges being brought, claiming it affected the sentence she could impose.
She said the first victim reported the matter to police 21 years ago as a consequence of publicity relating to the 1996 court case. “For reasons that remain unknown, no further action was taken by police until another victim went to police to follow up on his original complaint also made in 1996 in 2012,” she said.
“This delay between 1996 and now, 20 years, is most unsatisfactory and no legitimate reason for it has been proffered by the prosecution.”
Judge Quin said Reed’s offending was “a grave example of this kind of sexual abuse”.
However, his health had since deteriorated and he was no longer a threat to children.
