Former AFL player may be jailed
A magistrate has warned former Carlton footballer Nick Stevens he would feel āthe full force of the lawā for threatening and bashing an old girlfriend.
āThis starts with imprisonment,ā Magistrate Nunzio La Rosa said.
Stevens would receive no discount on his sentence for sustained violence against a woman, he said.
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āHeās shown no remorse, heās accepted no responsibility,ā the magistrate said at Stevensā plea hearing on Wednesday.
In January, Stevens was found guilty of 12 charges arising from the abuse charges against a woman he went out with in 2012 and 2013.
A magistrate found he threatened to kill the ex-girlfriend and her father, smashed her face into a tiled kitchen wall and left her with a cut face after pushing her head into the external wall of a house.
Stevens called an ex-AFL heavyweight into the Ringwood Magistrates Court on Wednesday to help him beat a possible jail term.
Michael Malouf, Carlton chief executive from 2003 to 2007, said the charges were completely inconsistent with the person he knew Stevens to be.
āI saw Nick as being on the pathway to being an AFL coachā Mr Malouf said.
āHe had all the attributes.ā
Stevens was part of Carltonās player-voted leadership group and the club vice-captain before a neck injury ended his career in 2009.
Allegations of repeated attacks and threats against his former partner ended a prospect of an AFL coaching career, the court heard.
Stevensā defence barrister Serge Petrovich said the 35-year-old had been in line for an assistant coaching job at St Kilda before abuse charges were laid.
Stevens was later told his coaching prospects were āgone and evaporatedā because sponsors were wary, Mr Petrovich said.
Mr Petrovich argued people with profiles like Stevensā suffer additional scrutiny and damage to their career prospects.
He submitted that a suspended sentence of community corrections order would be appropriate punishment.
Prosecutor, leading senior constable Mark Sontag, called for Stevens to be jailed.
On Wednesday, Stevens also pleaded guilty to a further charge of breaching an intervention order in 2013 when he sent more than 2500 text messages in three months to a person he was not supposed to contact.
He will be sentenced next week.
-AAP








