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The woman raped by Tom Silvagni has confronted him in court, declaring the “truth stood solid” despite all of his lies.
Silvagni, 23, was found guilty of two counts of rape on December 6 after a two-week jury trial in Victoria’s County Court.
His case has been suppressed by aseries of orders since he was charged in June last year – the final order being revoked on Thursday, which now allows Silvagni to be identified.
Silvagni returned to court via a video link on Friday morning, seated alone wearing prison greens from a room at the Melbourne Assessment Prison.
During the trial, the jury was told Silvagni digitally raped the woman twice in January last year, while pretending to be someone else the woman was involved with.
Close to 50 people were in the public gallery, but Silvagni’s parents, Carlton Football Club great Stephen Silvagni and his TV personality wife, Jo Silvagni, did not enter the court until after the woman he raped had delivered a moving statement.
The famous parents of Tom Silvagni waited until after the woman he raped had delivered a moving statement about the impact of his crimes to enter court. Photo / 123rf
Her voice breaking at first but growing in confidence over her 30-minute address, the woman began by saying: “Tom Silvagni, you raped me not once but twice.
“You know this, I know this and now so does everyone else,” she said.
“You are very much aware of what you did to me that night … It was not a mistake, it was premeditated.”
The woman told the court Silvagni was a friend and someone she thought she could trust, with the betrayal and his efforts to avoid being held responsible damaging her “ability to recognise who is safe”.
Silvagni sat blinking and showing little emotion as her statement proceeded.
‘Every single day I grieve the person I was before you’
The woman told the court that for the past two years she felt like she was “constantly hiding behind a mask because I don’t want to be a burden”.
“Every single day I grieve the person I was before you,” she said.
“So many times I just pray, wish and hope that life would go back to the way it was before you raped me.”
She said she was forced to live with feelings of guilt for potentially destroying his life and the lives of his family, because of his actions on that night.
“You didn’t just take my sense of safety, you took months of my life through gaslighting,” she said.
“Every deflection, every excuse made my healing harder … the fear you caused me didn’t come just from the assault, you made me not trust myself.”
She told the court she’d lost friends because of the impact and had spent the past two years feeling like her life was on hold and seeking professional help for the trauma.
She said she’d had to put herself out in an effort to make new friends, but there is always a “voice in the back of my head reminding me how lovely, sweet and respectful you were to me before you decided to rape me”.
“It’s actually terrifying that someone you thought and knew could do something so terrible,” the woman said.
She told the court that giving evidence during the trial forced her to relive the rapes.
“I wish you could experience how hard it was to be questioned by big, scary lawyers suggesting I was mistaken and my brain was playing tricks on me,” the woman said.
“You tried to rewrite the truth, you doctored evidence, you asked people to lie for you … after all of that, the truth stood solid.”
Speaking outside court, Stephen Silvagni said: “Jo and I, together with our family members and friends, are so disappointed with the outcome.
“We all love and support our son Tom. Our son continues to maintain his innocence, and we stand firmly behind him.
“We will be considering our options to appeal and shall not be making any further comments on this case. Our goal is to clear his name and bring him home, and ask for our privacy.
