The jury found Hunter guilty on all five counts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Patrick Joseph Hunter insisted he was innocent after the verdict was delivered. (ABC Kimberley: Ruby Littler)<\/p>\n
Hunter audibly sighed when the verdict was handed down.<\/p>\n
“You’re racist, I’ve got family of my own,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I hope you all burn in hell \u2026 I didn’t do them things, man.”<\/p>\n
The court heard Hunter’s two victims were both aged 10 or under.<\/p>\n
The offences occurred in a remote community between April 2019 and October 2020.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nikki Conley recounted evidence from the victims in court. (ABC Kimberley: Ruby Littler)<\/p>\n
Children give evidence<\/p>\n
During the three-day trial the jury heard evidence from the two child victims via a pre-recorded video link.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Nikki Conley detailed three indecent dealing incidents against one of the victims.<\/p>\n
The court also heard, via a recorded video interview, from another child who was sexually penetrated by Hunter and indecently dealt with.<\/p>\n
The court was told that the case hinged on whether the jury deemed the two children to be credible witnesses.<\/p>\n
Hunter’s defence lawyer, Fintan Roberts, attempted to discredit the witnesses throughout the trial.<\/p>\n
He told the jury about inconsistencies in the evidence in relation to the timeline of events and one of the children’s knowledge regarding certain sexual activities.<\/p>\n
But Ms Conley told the jury “the inconsistencies in evidence should not trouble you” because the statements were consistent in relation to the charge itself.<\/p>\n
“When a witness recalls something differently, it’s not because they are lying, it’s because they are human \u2026 and that’s especially true of children,” she said.<\/p>\n
Hunter is due to be sentenced in December by Judge Linda Petrusa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 46-year-old man has been found guilty of raping a child under the age of 10 and indecently…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":376546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,181031,20020,9872,12651,13155,50,181030,12650,12433,181032,311,8632],"class_list":{"0":"post-376545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-broome-district-court","10":"tag-child-abuse","11":"tag-girl","12":"tag-guilty","13":"tag-jury","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-patrick-joseph-hunter","16":"tag-rape","17":"tag-trial","18":"tag-trial-verdict","19":"tag-verdict","20":"tag-wa-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115543911808431614","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}