WITH her mother and her companion dog by her side, the young girl who was kidnapped while walking to school at Adamstown Heights last year, detained for five hours and subjected to repeated depraved sexual assaults, looked her attacker in the eye and began to speak.
She had been waiting for this day since June 12, 2018.
And for the next few minutes her voice never wavered as the girl, now 13, spoke directly to sexual predator Brett David Hill, outlining how his decision to abduct her and fulfill his sick sexual fantasies will have profound and lifelong effects on her.
"Today, tomorrow and for years ahead I will forever be scarred," the young girl said during a powerful victim impact statement in Newcastle District Court.
"You stole my body that day and you also stole my happiness and my life as I knew it. You kidnapped and raped me, my body was violated by you and it makes me feel physically sick. I have a massive invisible scar but no one will know until I fall to pieces. You violated me on that one long day, but it has impacted the rest of my life. You took away my safety and my life as I knew it. But I survived. You will have to live with what you did to me. I can never forgive you."
Her courage at such a young age to confront the man who changed her life forever and look him in the eye was sharply contrasted by Hill, who moments later sat in the same seat, burst into tears as he claimed he was genuinely remorseful but also made a half-hearted attempt to blame his abhorrent behaviour on his use of synthetic cannabis.
Hill's claims that smoking "bath salts" on the morning of the abduction rendered him unaware of what he was doing quickly crumbled under cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Lee Carr, SC, who pointed out that the kidnapping involved a degree of planning and premeditation and Hill was not reckless that day, but calculated in his desire for sexual gratification.
Judge Roy Ellis said Hill showed "no sympathy, no empathy and no compassion" for the girl during the kidnapping and repeated sexual assaults and jailed him for a maximum of 23 years and six months, with a non-parole period of 17 years. As Hill was being led out of the vast glass box in Newcastle District Court and through the door to the courthouse cells below, a man in the public gallery called out "hope you burn in hell you scum".
That emotion-charged statement appropriately encapsulates the general sentiment towards Hill, both in the community where he is reviled as a monster who perpetrated "every parent's worst nightmare", and in the prison system, where he resides in protection, has twice been bashed and routinely faces death threats.
The girl should have been safe walking the 500 metres or so from her grandparents' home to school on the morning of June 12, 2018.
But Hill was lurking, he spotted her leaving the house and grabbed her around the throat as she headed towards bushes near the back entrance of the school.
The girl screamed but Hill told her he had a knife.
"Do you want to live tomorrow," Hill told the girl. "Shut up or I'll suffocate you."
He dragged the girl to the dressing sheds at Hudson Park and sexually assaulted her. He then tied her to a tree and went to move his car closer so he could bundle the girl into the back seat.
Over the next five hours he drove the girl to two other unknown bush locations and repeatedly sexually assaulted her. He took a number of photographs of the girl in embarrassing or degrading positions and said horrendous things to her.
Before he dropped her off near Kotara railway station, Hill provided one last harrowing memory for the girl. "If you do tell anyone about this and I hear it on the TV or the radio I am waiting for you," Hill told her.
After an intense manhunt, Hill was arrested at Hamilton four days later. He will be 64 when he is eligible for parole in 2035. The world will be a different place. The young girl will be a young woman and she hopes, by then, she will feel safe again.
You will have to live with what you did to me. I can never forgive you.
The young girl's powerful victim impact statement.
