A serial NSW rapist and sadistic domestic abuser who inflicted a horrific reign of torture and torment upon six women has been jailed for at least 27 years.
Though some occurred decades apart, the victims’ accounts of the remorseless abuse were strikingly similar.
Two were forcibly held over hot stoves, others were beaten because they didn’t complete household chores to their tormentor’s satisfaction and several recounted rapes and being otherwise held against their will.
In one of the most shocking instances of abuse, the Central Coast man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, beat his pregnant partner with a plank of wood to force her to give birth on his birthday.
The woman later ran away but was compelled to return to the home soon after being threatened with never seeing her daughter again.
That young girl was later instructed to stab her mother in the head with a fork.
The man forced one partner and her child to eat off the floor anytime they took too long to eat meals; locked windows and doors and threatened to kill his partners so they couldn’t leave; hogtied one partner and left her in a bath filling with water; and used a vacuum cleaner pole to beat and rape his victims.
District Court Judge Sarah Huggett on Friday said much of the abuse was designed to “emphasise a victim’s powerlessness and worthlessness”.
Each relationship began amicably before descending into violence.
“When one woman found the strength to escape, he simply found a replacement,” she said on Friday.
“I have no doubt he derived pleasure in inflicting pain and fear on his victims.”
Acknowledging no sentence would necessarily reflect the harm upon his victim, Judge Huggett sentenced the 53-year-old to 36 years in prison for more than 40 offences committed between 1988 and his arrest in 2014.
He continues to maintain his innocence and pleaded not guilty at trial to 21 indictable offences – including 10 rapes and one indecent assault on a young child.
The serial rapist smiled in court on Friday as he was led away by custodial officers.
“I might give you something you want,” he said, looking towards the public gallery.
Using evidence given by a victim and her sister, Judge Huggett also recounted how close police came to uncovering the abuse as early as 1993.
The woman who’d previously been tortured for talking to police, made an unsuccessful escape attempt.
It was thwarted when her abuser caught her on the phone to her sister, bound her and then shoved her in a wardrobe.
When the victim’s sister, accompanied by police, arrived at the house minutes later looking for her sibling, the abuser said his partner wasn’t there and slammed the door shut.
The victim, inside the bedroom wardrobe, heard her sister calling her name but was too frightened to respond.
The 53-year-old rapist was previously jailed in the late 1980s for abusing his first wife and child.
-AAP
- National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero.