AN appeal to reduce a 'crushing' jail term of 22 years over a man's violent abuse of his then girlfriend over a 12-hour period has been refused.
The victim had been in a relationship with the 49-year-old man for just over 12 months after meeting him on an online dating service. He said he had fallen in love with her after a few months of dating. But things turned ugly on a Sunday afternoon in February, 2019.
They were living in a house at MacMasters Beach, on the Central Coast. After watching a movie, the woman said she felt tired and went to a bedroom to read a book but her boyfriend insisted she stay with him. He took her downstairs to a different bedroom and tied her hands together behind her back, verbally abusing her, and punching and slapping her in the face.
An audio recording retrieved from her phone contained evidence of extreme verbal, physical and sexual abuse, described in the Court of Criminal Appeal as 'demonstrating an attitude of power, dominance, belittlement and callousness'.
He threatened to torture and kill her by slitting her throat, cut her, and forced her into violent and demeaning sexual acts. During the ordeal, which began about 4pm and lasted for more than 12 hours, he forced her into the shower several times before assaulting again.
At one point he collected a pair of pliers and a hammer from the garage and threatened to rip out her teeth with the pliers or break her nose with the hammer.
After midnight he forced her to go with him to buy cigarettes from Kincumber. He hog-tied her hands and feet together and put her, naked, under a blanket behind the rear seats of the car. He then forced her to smoke with him, despite the fact she was not a smoker.
The man feel asleep about 4.30am when she fled from the scene and ran to a neighbour's house. He was not found until 12.45am on the Tuesday after he phoned police at Wamberal and admitted to "rather viciously" assaulting his girlfriend the night before.
When asked if she needed an ambulance he said, "Mate, I don't know. She probably did. I hit her a bunch, I cut her ... she left and went to the next-door neighbours." He was found sitting in the gutter and taken to Gosford police station.
The sentencing judge took into account the man's diagnosis of major depressive disorder, his remorse, and his early guilty plea, as well as a finding that his prospects of rehabilitation were 'guarded'.
The appeal, made on the grounds that the sentencing judge failed to apply the principles of totality, and that the sentence was manifestly excessive, with a reference to it being 'crushing', was dismissed. The Court of Criminal Appeal found that while the sentence imposed was a stern one, the offending was extremely grave.
"As the Crown described it in this Court, the "offending had at its core the intentional infliction of fear, pain, physical injury and sexual violence designed to frighten, harm, degrade and humiliate the victim and exercise control and domination over her".
"The offending had at its core the intentional infliction of fear, pain, physical injury and sexual violence."
Court of Criminal Appeal
The charges included including aggravated detail person with intent to obtain advantage occasioning actual bodily harm, aggravated sexual intercourse without consent inflicting actual bodily harm, aggravated sexual intercourse without consent - threaten to inflict actual bodily harm by means of offensive weapon, and sexual intercourse without consent.
The man was jailed on February 12, 2019, making him eligible for release on parole halfway through the year 2035.
