A 25-year-old man who got a 15-year-old girl pregnant and beat her has been jailed for more than four years.
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The man, who has not been named to protect the identity of the girl, was charged with having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl, assaulting the girl and perverting the course of justice.
In a judgment published on Wednesday, ACT Supreme Court Chief Justice Helen Murrell said the man's actions would have life-long impacts on the victim.
The court heard that between October 2017 and April 2018 the man had carried out a sexual relationship with the girl, whom he met when he supplied her and her previous much older boyfriend with ice.
The girl left the previous relationship because she said she was being abused. Chief Justice Murrell labelled the man's behaviour as opportunistic.
Shortly after this relationship ended the girl contacted the man and they met and smoked ice together, before having sex.
In the following three days they drove around Canberra together smoking ice.
The relationship continued and consisted of frequent drug use and sexual intercourse.
In a number of messages between the pair the man admitted the girl's age was problematic and he was warned by a friend to not have sex with a minor.
At one point the girl sent a picture of the man's penis to her own phone, which he later made her delete saying it was an offence to send explicit images to a minor.
In April 2018 the girl discovered she was pregnant with the man's child, to which his reaction was, "we gonna be a family".
The assault charges related to several occasions where the man hit the girl. In one instance the pair had an argument in his car and he struck her several times in the face, causing a black eye.
On another occasion he hit the girl in the abdomen, when he knew she was pregnant, causing her to buckle forward.
Earlier he had threatened that if she refused to get an abortion he would ensure there was no baby.
The perverting the course of justice charge related to the man offering the girl his car if she told the police she did not know who the father of her child was. He made several calls to the girl to ensure she would not give evidence against him.
Chief Justice Murrell said the fact the girl did not oppose the intercourse did not matter as no child could give consent and any relationship between an adult and child was presumed to harm the child.
She said despite his fondness for the girl, the man had taken advantage of her vulnerabilities to maintain a highly inappropriate relationship.
The fact the girl fell pregnant was an aggravating factor, she said, as it would cause her life-long consequences.
She said the instances of assault were serious as they occurred in a domestic violence situation where the man held power over the girl.
The court heard the man had gone into a downward spiral due to heavy drug use. He had also fathered two children from a previous relationship where he was 15 years old and the woman was 23.
Chief Justice Murrell believed the man held reasonably good prospects of rehabilitation.
He received a total sentence of four years and six months imprisonment, with a two years and six months non-parole period.
He will be eligible for release in August 2020.