An Adelaide cafe owner has lost an appeal against a conviction for offering $200 for a 16-year-old employee to have sex with him.
The Court of Criminal Appeal unanimously rejected all four grounds put by the cafe owner, Miguel Dantas De Sa, in a judgement handed down on Tuesday.
He was found guilty of a single count of aggravated communicating with the intention of procuring a child for sexual activity last May, along with two counts of aggravated indecent assault.
He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years' jail, with a non-parole period of 13 months.
In her evidence, the girl said she was working an evening shift in 2016 when De Sa asked her to go with him to a cool room.
Inside, he stood "real close" to her and asked her what she would do for $200 — to which she replied she would clean out the storeroom or rearrange decorations.
He then gave her cash, asked her to go to a supermarket to buy marshmallows and bread and, on her return to the cafe, he met her in the storeroom.
Inside, De Sa told her to lock the door and asked her to sit on his lap.
She said he asked whether she would have sex with him for $200.
He also touched her on the side of the bottom and got her to pull down her jeans so he could see it.
Appeal judges agree with trial judge
In dismissing the appeal, Chief Justice Chris Kourakis, Justice David Peek and Justice Malcolm Blue said trial judge Liesl Chapman did not make the factual errors De Sa claimed she did, nor did she fail to correctly apply the rule of proof beyond reasonable doubt.
In particular, De Sa's lawyer, Craig Caldicott, raised inconsistencies between the victim's evidence in her statement to police and what her mother told the court.
The appeal judges did not agree.
"Insofar as there were inconsistencies, the judge properly considered them and took them into account in assessing the honesty and reliability of the complainant's evidence," they wrote in their judgement.
De Sa also claimed he was at a disadvantage because he had deleted messages to and from the victim that she had kept in the four years between the crime and the trial.
The appeal judges agreed with Judge Chapman that, despite a "delayed and deficient police investigation", she did "not consider any forensic disadvantage to be significant".
