JAMES Peter Ryall went on Facebook on Wednesday morning to tell anyone who cared that he was going back to jail.
"It looks like I'm going back to jail for 12 [months] now so goodbye everyone on Facebook," Ryall wrote a few hours before his sentencing in Newcastle Local Court. "Talk to you all when I get back out."
Ryall, 37, his then girlfriend, Crystal Rigg, 39, and 24-year-old Amanda Palmer had waged a sustained and brutal attack on an intellectually disabled and hearing impaired woman over a number of days in October 2020. The group filmed themselves terrorising the 20-year-old, repeatedly bashing her, videoing her in the shower and stalking her before pulling her out of another car at Charlestown and assaulting her again.
The motivation for the repeated assaults is unclear, but court documents reference a $70,000 trust account and "retaliation" for the victim "breaking up" Rigg and Ryall.
The group had faced extremely serious charges - including robbery in company, assault and kidnapping - but pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company, intentionally recording an intimate image without consent and intimidation in June after the DPP agreed to withdraw a number of the more serious offences.
It was an incredible deal, not to mention the agreement that the charges be prosecuted in the local court, where the group faced lesser maximum penalties.
And yet, Ryall - who spent nearly eight months behind bars before being granted Supreme Court bail in June - was resigned to returning to jail. But on Monday afternoon, after Magistrate Janine Lacy had heard submissions, Ryall was granted a reprieve; the latest memorandum from the chief magistrate states anyone on bail who is going to be sentenced to a term of imprisonment should have their matter adjourned until after the current public health order.
Ryall, it seems, will ultimately be returning to jail.
But with an alarming number of COVID cases in NSW it might not be anytime soon.
The matter was adjourned until Monday for Magistrate Lacy to sentence Rigg and Palmer and for a decision to be made about when to sentence Ryall.
