Detective Sergeant Mark Guthrie and Detective Senior Constable Ray Martland have been recognised for outstanding police work. 81590 Picture: DAMJAN JANEVSKI
By LAURA WAKELY
TWO Brimbank detectives who headed an investigation into child prostitution were among award recipients at a ceremony in Caroline Springs last week.
Detective Sergeant Mark Guthrie and Detective Senior Constable Ray Martland received a Divisional Commendation for their investigation, which resulted in a 50-year-old Viewbank man being jailed for seven years.
The investigation began in 2009 after a young girl reported a sexual assault to police.
With nothing but a phone number to follow, police soon found a number of underage girls had been contacted by a 50-year-old Viewbank man.
During an intense 12-month investigation detectives discovered the man had been using the girls, aged between 13 and 15, as prostitutes.
“They weren’t young girls that were contacted online or groomed or anything like that. I suppose it was just circumstances available to earn money that way,” Det Sen Const Martland said.
But getting the girls involved to feel confident speaking to police was the real battle of the case according to Det Sgt Guthrie.
“A lot of these girls we were dealing with, a lot of people hadn’t believed them,” he said.
“Once we got these girls on board to start talking to us, things starting moving reasonably quickly from then.”
For Det Sen Const Martland the award was unexpected, given the investigation was “part and parcel” of his job, but the real satisfaction was seeing a result for the victims of the crimes.
“Satisfaction for those girls too, knowing what they’d been through and knowing that they actually wanted to try and do something to set their lives in a different path,” he said.
Det Sgt Guthrie said he hoped people in similar situations could see the case as a reason to trust police.
“We know there’s a lot of things out there that people don’t tell us,” he said.
“They’ve got to have the belief in us. If they show they’ve got the belief in us, we’ll show we have the belief in them.”
