Survivor says convicted paedophile and former prominent Surf Life Saving member Robert John Beavis's jail term is 'disappointing'

They were eight and nine years old, having a friendly sleep over at his Belmont house.

"It just doesn't seem right," the woman, now aged 24 and who cannot be named, told the Newcastle Herald. "I'm disappointed .... I have to live with this for the rest of my life and he gets ... two more years. And the fact he doesn't show any remorse for what he did, that is heart breaking, it really is."

Beavis, a former Surf Life Saving member who represented the Hunter at local, regional, state and national events, pleaded guilty in Newcastle District Court on Tuesday to one count of aggravated indecent assault, and two counts of sexual intercourse with a child under ten.

Other offences taken into account on sentence by Justice Roy Ellis related to an ongoing course of conduct involving further acts of sexual intercourse on a child under ten and a separate aggravated indecent assault on one of the same two victims.

One of the two victims, who cannot be named, sat in court with her partner while Beavis, 55, appeared via audio visual link from Hunter Correctional Centre. He was arrested and charged on January 15, 2020, while already behind bars after being found guilty by trial of sex offences on a third victim.

At the end of that trial he was jailed for eight years, with a non-parole period of four years and ten months. He appealed the severity of that sentence but the appeals court made no change to the bottom line, meaning he remained ineligible for parole until February 2022.

The court heard on Tuesday that the new charges, relate to similar assaults on two additional victims between 2003 and 2006 during visits to his family's home in Belmont.

His offences include indecently assaulting each of the girls in a swimming pool, and also at the beach.

"I was expecting more from the justice side of things ... I don't think I got the justice I was after," the woman said. ''What about us ... what about us that have to relive it every single day."

The woman's husband said it felt like a 'kick in the guts'. "Seven years for one girl and then to tack on an extra two for two girls ... it doesn't seem right.

Both of the victims were assaulted by Beavis during sleep overs, waking up to find Beavis had snuck up on them and was touching them after everyone had fallen asleep.

They were too scared to say anything, feeling shocked and unsure of what had happened. In one case one of the girls tried to move away but he followed her and assaulted her again.

A couple of months after the first of the two victim's tenth birthdays, she went to the beach with Beavis and his family during the Christmas school holidays.

She agreed to go but said she was not keen on swimming in the ocean because she was not a confident swimmer, but she agreed to go in to avoid disappointing her friend.

She was scared. Beavis swam over to her and held onto her. He assaulted her there, while holding her against his front, where her feet couldn't touch the bottom. He said she had to stay with him because she couldn't swim in the waves.

She eventually got away from him but she got tossed by a wave so he picked her up again and assaulted her again. She got away a second time and was dumped by a wave in the process. She was never alone with him again.

Judge Ellis said the sentence needed to replicate what would have happened if Beavis had been sentenced over the assaults of all three victims at the one time.

There was some discount for Beavis's plea of guilty and the need for a partial accumulation of sentences, but he noted there was "no expression of remorse or contrition".

Children were entitled to be kept safe, in an environment where they were not the subject of sexual abuse, he said. "Indeed, one would say that parents of children should be able to permit their children to play with other children and go to the homes of other children without the fear that their child may be sexually abused," he said.

The woman who sat in court to hear the sentence being handed down said she has flash backs every day. "I sit and think, 'Why me, why did I have to go through this' and today, having to talk about it, that's hard for us to live with,'' she said.

"And also there's the anxiety of, what happens when he does get out - am I going to run into him? I am bound to run into him. "If I had have known I was going to get this result I probably wouldn't have done it ... it's disappointing."

Beavis was handed a maximum jail term of eleven years, with a non-parole period of six years and six months, making him eligible for release on June 6, 2024.

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