'Everyone's going to die soon anyway': Man's chilling excuse for pandemic sex attack

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Everyone was going to die soon anyway so he could do what he wanted.

That’s what a man said when he invaded a woman’s home and sexually attacked her the night before the Covid-19 lockdown started in 2020.

The woman’s grandchild was asleep in another room.

Subsequently found guilty after a judge-alone trial of seven sexual violation charges and two of assaulting someone in a family relationship, the man was later sentenced by Judge Warren Cathcart (who had heard the case) to eight years imprisonment but appealed to the High Court to have the term reduced.

In a decision recently released online, High Court Justice Dale La Hood upheld the district court judge’s sentence.

The offender, who is in his late 50s, cannot be named for legal reasons.

With the nation on notice that a lockdown would begin at 11.59pm on March 25, 2020, he stealthily entered his ex-partner’s home at about 3am the day before.

He tried to disable the phone line and internet, placed a knife close to where the victim was sleeping on a couch, and moved her phone away from her.

She woke to find him holding her throat with both hands.

He was angry she had blocked him on social media and had a trespass order served on him earlier that month.

He said he would do what he wanted and would get away with it because everyone was going to die soon anyway. That sinister threat marked the beginning of an hour’s torment for the woman. He hit and slapped her in the head while making demands and directing her movements.

The attack only stopped when the victim tricked him into going outside onto the deck (by feigning willingness to participate in sexual acts).

She took a chance to run back inside and lock him out. She screamed for her grandchild, who was asleep in another room, which caused the man to flee.

He has a substantial criminal history dating between 1982 and 2012, including offences for which he has served short prison terms. He also has convictions for family violence and breaches of a protection order but these latest convictions were his first for sexual offending.

On appeal, counsel Eric Forster said the sentence was manifestly excessive. The starting point of nine and a half years was too high because the court had erred in making the oral violations the lead charges and aligning them with the rape bands of a guiding case.

Mr Forster argued the offending as a whole more appropriately fell in the unlawful sexual connection bands of the guidance case.

He submitted a starting point of seven or eight years imprisonment would have been appropriate with an end sentence as low as five years and 11 months.

Crown counsel Michael Blaschke refuted the submissions saying the end sentence shouldn’t be disturbed. The starting point was well within range of the guiding case and credits given were appropriate.

Justice La Hood agreed, saying he found no error in the approach taken by Judge Cathcart or the categorisation of the offending.

“Assessing the oral violations in the context of the offending as a whole, it is clear they resulted in the type of serious violation of the victim’s sexual autonomy that require them to be treated as falling within the rape bands.”