For years Roy ‘Dootch’ Kennedy was a respected, influential member of the Illawarra Aboriginal community.
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Now, he stands a convicted sexual predator, destined to spend more than a decade behind bars.
The disgraced founder of the Sandon Point Aboriginal Tent Embassy was jailed for a minimum 12 years and a maximum 17 years on Monday for the “grotesque” sexual abuse of a teenage girl in the 1990s.
His infatuation with the teen began before she was 15 and soon took a depraved sexual turn, resulting in the birth of two children and a third pregnancy – with twins – that ended in miscarriage.
Presiding judge Paul Conlon said Kennedy had exploited the teen’s youth “in the worst possible way”, noting he had exhibited a “powerful physical and emotional domination” over her during their ‘relationship’.
“Adults hold a position of power and control over children and the offender abused that position,” he said.
“She was entitled to...not be the target of the offender’s lust and sexual gratification.
“The courts have a role to play in imposing sentences of a salutary nature to send the message loud and clear that such grotesque offending will not be tolerated.”
The court heard on each occasion the teen fell pregnant she was forced to lie about the identity of the father, blaming the first on a drunken one night stand and the second on a then-boyfriend with whom she’d never actually been intimate.
Judge Conlon said the loss of the twins in her third pregnancy when she was 17 would have been “no doubt a most traumatic event”.
Kennedy’s last assault on the teen, sometime in the late 1990s, was both frantic and violent.
Having spun a false story about their son’s health to lure the girl into his car, Kennedy began abusing her about her new relationship.
In a jealous rage, the now 59-year-old threatened to drive them both off a cliff at Kembla Grange before violently raping the teen on the back seat of the vehicle.
The abuse was not reported to police at the time and only came to light in 2013.
Kennedy was arrested in January 2014 and maintained his innocence for 18 months until entering guilty pleas to four charges on the morning of his NSW District Court trial last December.
During a sentencing hearing in February, the victim said her children had been “confused and upset” when they learnt the identity of their father and the-once close relationship she’d shared with them had become estranged.
The woman broke down in tears when Kennedy’s sentence was read out on Monday.
He will become eligible for release on parole in 2028.
