A sentencing judge is not obliged to accept an offender's account of childhood abuse in mitigation merely because the prosecution did not specifically challenge it, provided the judge fairly put the offender on notice of concerns about the account. A Jones v Dunkel inference cannot be drawn from a victim of family violence's failure to call the alleged perpetrator as a witness. Where an offender's plea materials contain an inherent conflict — here, reliance on both extensive parental abuse and supportive parental character references — the judge is entitled to observe that the offender cannot simultaneously enjoy the full mitigatory effect of both propositions.
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