John Paul Garay to be locked up over historical child rapes in Wanniassa

Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson indicated on Friday that the only question mark about John Paul Garay's sentence was the length of time the man would spend behind bars.

Garay, aged in his early 60s, faced a judge-alone trial in the ACT Supreme Court last year after denying 18 child sex charges.

Justice Loukas-Karlsson ultimately found him guilty of two counts of sexual intercourse with a child and six counts of committing an act of indecency on a child.

Garay committed each of the offences at his home in Wanniassa in the 1980s, preying on a vulnerable boy who regularly stayed with him during school holidays.

The judge acquitted Garay of the remaining 10 charges, which all alleged indecent acts against the same child.

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The victim, now a middle-aged man, has previously detailed how the abuse he suffered at Garay's hands ruined his childhood and left him in "a perpetual state of torment".

He and his wife were in court on Friday as Justice Loukas-Karlsson said full-time imprisonment for Garay was "inevitable".

Garay's fate was only delayed because he has been "having a bit of a nightmare navigating the aged care system", as barrister Margaret Jones SC put it, while attempting to find appropriate accommodation for his elderly mother, for whom he is a carer.

Ms Jones said Garay had "no delusions" about the sentence that awaited him, telling the court the man was doing all he could to get his mother into a nursing home.

Justice Loukas-Karlsson ultimately said sentencing Garay on Friday would be "to the extreme detriment" of Garay's mother.

She said she would instead impose imprisonment on March 31, telling Garay it was "imperative" that his mother was appropriately accommodated by that date.

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