Paedophile Maurice Van Ryn granted appeal due to clerical error

A spokesperson for his victims’ families, who was in court on October 14 to hear the matter, said the leave was granted due to a clerical error.

The Bega District News has earlier reported that in February a court had referred to the “wrong offence provision, maximum penalty and standard non-parole period when re-sentencing” in a “document prepared by the Crown”. 

In August, Van Ryn had an application to reopen his sentencing following the error refused by the Supreme Court of NSW’s Court of Criminal Appeal.

The spokesperson said the fact it was used as a reason to grant special leave to appeal in the recent matter “came as a surprise” to the families.

“We thought it was done and dusted a couple of months ago,” he said. 

But  while the appeal would go ahead, he thought Van Ryn was unlikely to get much of a reduction in his sentence. 

“As far as we are going, most of us are feeling we’d like to think that he doesn’t get any sort of reduction regardless,” the spokesperson said. 

He said Van Ryn’s continued attempts to appeal his sentence were tiring for the families as well as being “very draining and inconvenient” as they involved trips away from the South Coast to Sydney. 

In March, the self-confessed paedophile applied for special leave to appeal against his increased sentence in the High Court of Australia and the matter was listed for oral argument in Sydney on October 14.

Oral argument involves each side being allocated 20 minutes to convince two or three judges to grant or refuse special leave to appeal.