A self-proclaimed champion of battered women repeatedly stole money earmarked for domestic violence victims to feed her gambling habit, a judge has been told.
Anne Elizabeth Dalton had "a narcissistic sense of entitlement and her hubris in this offending has been breathtaking", prosecutor Peter Longson told the South Australian District Court on Wednesday.
"She used the plight of women subjected to domestic violence as a front and cover for her uncontrolled compulsion to play the pokies."
The 65-year-old former public servant was found guilty of 271 counts of falsification of accounts from July 1999 to April 2003, while managing the Family and Youth Services (FAYS) office at Modbury.
She was found to have submitted 271 bogus application forms for emergency financial assistance, said to be from victims of domestic violence who wanted to leave their partners.
The amounts requested were up to $500, and totalled $100,475.
During sentencing submissions, Mr Longson said Dalton stole from the public purse the very money she had been entrusted to use to help vulnerable women.
"She continued to claim she was the champion of battered women," he said.
"She claimed to be on the front line when she lied, manipulated and stole."
Dalton betrayed her staff by making them sign documents and used agencies such as the police and hospitals, providing fake information said to be from them in relation to the phantom victims.
Mr Longson said Dalton also showed disregard to her husband when she gambled away his life entitlements and "ruined the remainder of his life".
"She is a woman who has lied to everybody at every opportunity", and had shown no remorse, the prosector said.
Defence lawyer John Lyons said the judge should take into account Dalton's poor health and her previous good character in a caring profession.
Judge Paul Rice will sentence her on September 6.
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