Darwin Alderman Rebecca Want de Rowe has publicly criticised the Supreme Court jury’s conviction of her paedophile husband Kent Rowe, stating on social media recently that he is “innocent” despite being found guilty in 2022 of the repeated and remorseless sexual abuse of a young female family member over many years.

Rowe was sentenced in November 2022 to five years in prison, suspended after two-and-a-half years, following his September 2022 conviction on six counts of rape involving the repeated historical sexual abuse of the female relative while in his 20s, including anal rape and sexual assault while she slept – part of what Chief Justice Michael Grant called “predatory and reprehensible conduct” over many years.

The court also found Rowe repeatedly lied about his crimes and manipulated the victim to “feel shame” about the abuse for years in order to prevent her from reporting it.

Ms Want de Rowe took to social media late last month to announce that Rowe was “coming home soon” and that the pair are a “packaged deal”.

“If you want nothing to do with him, then sadly please remove me as your friend from Facebook,” she wrote on an account with a photo of the pair.

“Whatever your reasons are, it’s ok. Lots of people have already done it and I’m ok.

“I know my husband is innocent and I will love him for the rest of my days.

“All I want is to know that the people I share my life with, sincerely want the best for us.”

Ms Want de Rowe was first elected to Darwin Council representing the Richardson Ward in 2012.

She was last re-elected to council in August 2021 – with the second highest number of votes of all council candidates in the city – two months before Kent Rowe was publicly named for the first time, after being committed to stand trial in October of that year for the historical sex crimes.

Ms Want de Rowe did not respond to questions yesterday, including if she would resign from council after publicly criticising the Northern Territory judicial system with false claims that Rowe is “innocent”, or if she felt she should resign from public life to focus on her young family after the public turmoil caused by her husband’s actions.

She remained in her council role during Rowe’s trial, where it was revealed the victim had confided in her about Rowe’s sex crimes in 2018, three years before the victim went to police.

She reportedly told friends the victim had made up the story to take down the powerful Labor figure and said in court she believed his story from 2018 that he was just “curious” about the female victim’s genitals.

Ms Want de Rowe also told Justice Grant during a pre-trial hearing that she did not want to provide evidence at the trial because she feared the negative media coverage might affect her role as an elected Darwin Alderman.

Rowe’s sentence is due to finish in March. Early release is determined by the Corrections Commissioner, but it does not appear that Rowe would qualify for that.

The two-and-a-half year sentence was described as “manifestly inadequate” at the time by many legal observers, however the DPP did not appeal the judge’s ruling.

Territory Labor also supported Rowe after child sex abuse conviction

Senior Territory Labor figures wrote character references for Rowe ahead of sentencing in November 2022, including former Labor deputy chief minister Syd Stirling’s wife Jenny Djerrkura, as well as Supreme Court Judge Jenny Blokland’s husband and party backroom figure Jamie Gallacher.

The Labor figures, who had to acknowledge the nature of the crimes and the conviction, argued that Rowe had done well for the Labor Party in his role as secretary and organiser of the successful 2016 and 2020 NT elections and “deserved a second chance”.

Six months after providing the reference letters for Rowe, the Labor government passed legislation to make it illegal for anyone to help a convicted sex offender get a reduced sentence by writing character references for them.

In her own letter to the courts ahead of sentencing, Ms Want de Rowe claimed the Territory Labor Party was too “toxic” for Rowe and that he was “happier and healthier” after resigning from the party.

Rowe was forced to resign from the role of Michael Gunner’s senior adviser in 2021, after he was identified by the NT Independent as the main player in Labor’s ‘cocaine sex scandal’, that Mr Gunner later said he had lied about.

That affair involved Rowe sending pictures of his penis to a local “bondage mistress”, engaging in online discussions about illicit drugs over weeks, painting portraits of dead dogs and allegedly engaging in a drug-fuelled sex romp on election night in 2020 with the sex worker.

After Rowe was named as the staffer involved, the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, contacted police to report the historical sex crimes. It was later revealed she told party insiders and friends about the abuse she suffered by Rowe in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018 before contacting police herself in 2021. That led to a “pretext call” recorded by police in which Rowe told the victim what he did to her was “abhorrent” and repeatedly apologised.

During sentencing for the sex crimes, Justice Grant said Rowe had acted in a “calculated” way to “neutralise the risk of [the victim] making a complaint to police”, by claiming he was getting professional help that he never sought.

“You, by lies, intended to cast yourself as the victim … and the victim as the villain,” Justice Grant said in sentencing remarks. “It is to your great discredit and should be a matter of great shame to you although I suspect it isn’t.”

He added that Rowe’s actions had caused considerable psychological harm to the victim over many years, left a “profound and longstanding impact” on her and affected her ability to “enjoy life … without the shadow and stigma of child sexual abuse”.

The victim had earlier told the court that Rowe had made her feel like “an accomplice to my own sexual assaults” and that the incidents had left her “scared to fall asleep at night”.