Boyfriend 'told to hide teenager for five years'
A 14-year-old runaway girl insisted her boyfriend hide her in his house for nearly five years, the man’s lawyer told a court in Australia today.
Scott Black concealed Natasha Ryan so successfully at his home in the Queensland state town of Rockhampton that eventually she was presumed dead and a serial killer was charged with her murder.
Now 20 and the mother of Black’s one-year-old son, Ryan ran away from her home in 1998.
Police were led by an anonymous tip-off to Black’s house in April 2003 and found Ryan hiding in a cupboard.
The discovery came as serial killer Leonard Fraser was standing trial charged with several murders, including Ryan’s.
Black, now 28, has pleaded guilty in the Queensland District Court in Rockhampton to perjury for his testimony at Fraser’s April 2002 preliminary hearing in which Black claimed not to have seen or heard from Ryan since her disappearance.
Black was due to be sentenced today, but Judge Grant Britton postponed his decision.
Defence lawyer Anne Demack told the court Black and Ryan had become entrenched in their deception.
“It’s clear he asked her to end the situation and at all times she was free to end the situation and free Mr Black of the obligation of hiding her,” Demack told the court.
“He felt powerless to end it due to Ms Ryan’s insistence that she remain hidden,” she added.
Demack asked for a suspended prison sentence while Prosecutor Justin Whalley called for five years’ imprisonment. The maximum sentence for perjury is 14 years.
Fraser was convicted of murdering three women.
Rockhampton is 340 miles north of state capital Brisbane.
