TWO men found guilty of touching up a 14-year-old girl in the public toilets at Nelson Bay's foreshore park and later in the car when they gave her a lift home have been jailed for a total of nine years.
Francis Mitchell Leigh, 37, and Neil George Wood, 32, were found guilty at the end of a trial in June of eight counts each of sexually touching the girl on February 12, 2019.
It was a joint criminal enterprise where both men were knowingly involved in the assault on the young teenaged girl who had been walking home to Shoal Bay from a shopping trip with her friend when she encountered the men in the park.
Both men, who had vehemently denied the charges, appeared shocked at the verdicts, shaking their heads when they were read out at the end of the trial in Newcastle District Court. 'Woodsy' and 'Franky', were sentenced to four years and six months jail on eight counts each of sexually touching the girl, with a non-parole period of two years and six months, making them eligible for release on parole on September 20, 2023.
The girl was beckoned over by Leigh, who introduced himself to her as 'Franky' after inviting her to have a cigarette with him. They talked about a girl they both knew, before 'Woodsy' joined them. Franky had planned to meet his mate, Woodsy, in the park to get a hair cut because he was going to a funeral the next day and wanted to look respectable, the jury was told. He asked the teenager if she gave haircuts, and asked her to do it for him instead, to which she agreed.
She pointed to a table, out in the open and under lights, but said the two men convinced her to do it in the toilets where the light was better. She found it hard to say no, she told police in her evidence. In the toilets the men groped her, one after the other.
She was "scared as f---", she said, and she felt that she couldn't leave. She said she believed that she was going to be raped, but tried to act as if she wasn't scared. when she got into a car with them to be driven home the two men assaulted her again.
