A man who had sex with a 14-year-old girl who initially told him she was 16 walked free from a Queensland court without a conviction.
Bailey Truman Merz, 21, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years probation in the Brisbane District Court on Monday.
He earlier pleaded guilty to the unlawful carnal knowledge and indecent treatment of a child.
Bailey Truman Merz was sentenced to two-and-a-half years probation for having sex with a 14-year-old girl who initially told him she was 16 (pictured outside Brisbane District Court)
The 21-year-old escaped jail and did not have a conviction recorded against him
There was an audible sigh of relief from the gallery as his friends and family learned a conviction would not be recorded.
The court heard Merz, then 19, met the victim in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley on June 1, 2016.
She told him she was 16 and they went back to his house in Sherwood in southwest Brisbane, where they had sex.
The victim then told Merz she was 15, which he told his friends in a text message, but she was actually only 14.
He earlier pleaded guilty to the unlawful carnal knowledge and indecent treatment of a child
There was an audible sigh of relief from the gallery as his friends and family learned a conviction would not be recorded
Merz’s took the girl home less than six months after he made headlines when he was punched in the head trying to break up a brawl in the same nightclub district.
Corey Glen Schumann, 21, was sentenced to 21 months in jail and ordered to pay Merz $2,000 after pleading guilty to bodily harm.
Sickening CCTV showed Merz acting as a peacemaker in a fight between two groups when Schumann punched him in the head, snapping his head back and knocking him to the pavement unconscious.
Judge Kiernan Dorney QC took into account the ongoing impact of the one-punch attack in January 2016, when sentencing Merz on Monday.
Merz’s took the girl home less than six months after he made headlines when he was punched in the head trying to break up a brawl in the same nightclub district
Police said he tried to intervene in an altercation (left) before he was knocked unconscious (far right)
He said the reason Merz was charged with carnal knowledge was because he had had sex with the girl the following morning knowing she was underage.
The indecent treatment of a child offence arose after he asked her multiple times to perform oral sex, to which she complied because she felt coerced.
In a victim impact statement, the girl said she had run away from home and was ‘in a really bad place’ at the time of the incident.
Judge Kiernan said because there was no further information about what else was going on for her, he could not determine what impact Merz’s offending had had on the victim.
Judge Kiernan Dorney QC said the reason Merz was charged with carnal knowledge was because he had had sex with the girl the following morning knowing she was underage
The indecent treatment of a child offence arose after he asked her multiple times to perform oral sex, to which she complied because she felt coerced
Judge Kiernan said Merz’s crime was ‘opportunistic’ but his lack of prior convictions, good work history, family support, the fact the pair were close in age and the girl willingly went with him swayed him not to record a conviction.
He said as a 19-year-old at the time, Merz lacked the maturity to decide not to have sex with the victim because of her age.
‘This is likely to be a one-off,’ he said, referring to Merz’s good prospects of rehabilitation, and did not warrant imprisonment.