In Western Australia, the mere presence of a psychiatric condition is not of itself mitigation in sentencing; it must be shown that the condition contributed to the commission of the offence or lessened moral culpability. The broader Victorian approach in R v Tsiaras — that a person suffering from serious psychiatric illness is not an appropriate vehicle for general deterrence regardless of whether the illness contributed to the offence — is not followed in WA for depressive illness in the context of serious premeditated sexual offences. For a series of separate sequential sexual offences committed as part of a single transaction, the whole transaction must be considered in fixing the sentence for each offence, and the fact that an offence is part of a series is a factor increasing the term otherwise applicable.
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