Now-former Noosa councillor Frank James Pardon will serve 18 months in prison after being convicted this week of child sexual assault charges involving a teenage girl in the 1990s.
Pardon was found guilty on Wednesday of this week by a jury in the Maroochydore District Court and was today sentenced in the same court to a prison term of three years, to be suspended halfway through the term.
As a result of his sentence Pardon has been automatically disqualified from office as a Noosa councillor.
With the next council election less than six months away, in March next year, the Local Government Act stipulates the vacancy will not be filled until the election.
Pardon, 70, was found guilty of five counts of indecent treatment of a child, four counts while under care and one count of maintaining a sexual relationship with a minor.
He was acquitted of one charge of indecent treatment of a child.
In sentencing Pardon today, Friday 13 November, Judge Glen Clash said Pardon’s offending was “serious” and would have had huge “psychological impacts” on the victim.
“What you did was to allow your sexual interest in the complainant to overcome the realisation that what you were doing was seriously wrong,” Judge Cash said.
During the trial, the court heard Pardon assaulted the young teenage girl over several months at a Sunshine Coast business, in his vehicle and home.
In one instance he drove the victim and her friend to a business and supplied them with alcohol before kissing and touching the victim in front of her friend.
The acts occurred before Pardon was elected to council, he was charged over the offences in early 2017.
