A man who choked a four-year-old autistic boy while he was babysitting him has avoided time in prison and has been sentenced to 180 hours of community service.
The man was found guilty in the ACT Magistrates Court last week after the court viewed CCTV footage from inside the child's home.
The court heard the child and his siblings had been left in the care of the man while their mother went out to meet a friend.
During her evidence, she said her son lived "in his own little bubble", was non-verbal and loved hugs.
The court heard he did not attend daycare or school.
The alarm was raised when the boy's mother came home to find bruises on his neck after he had been left in the care of the man for several hours.
The case focused on two particular incidents, one in a bedroom and another in the lounge room.
'Spit it out'
The man was initially charged with assaulting the boy in the bedroom as he tried to remove something from his mouth and take him to another part of the house.
His defence was that he thought the boy had put things in his mouth and he was trying to get them out, to avoid him choking.
In the video, he can be heard telling the child to "spit it out".
The man told the court the boy particularly liked to put hair ties in his mouth.
"Oh yeah, he loves them … didn't matter if it was in the dirt, he saw it and put it in his mouth," he said.
After viewing the CCTV of the bedroom incident several times, Magistrate Louise Taylor dismissed the assault charge, saying it could not be proven.
However, Magistrate Taylor found a second incident in the lounge room, where the man was accused of choking the child to be proven.
In the footage, the man can be seen grabbing the child by the back of the neck as he tried to get him to take a bottle.
Prosecutors put to the man that he had become frustrated and was trying to punish the boy but the man said that was not the case.
"[The child] never does what you want him to do, it's part of looking after him … getting used to looking after him," he said.
When police showed him images of the bruising he became upset and said he was no better than "a rock spider".
Magistrate Taylor told the court on Monday she accepted his remorse was authentic and that the action was not "driven by malice".
Ms Taylor said rather the incident was the result of a lack of experience in caring for children.
"It seemed very odd to me that [the mother] would leave [the child] in circumstances where he had never cared for them [on his own]," Ms Taylor said during the case.
The man has been placed on a two-year good behaviour order and has been given a year to complete his community service work.
