Mackay rapist dad fails to have 8 year jail term reduced

A father jailed for eight years for a horrific sex attack against the mother of his children has attempted to have the convictions quashed or the penalty reduced. Warning: Graphic content.

A rapist jailed for eight years for a horrific sex attack against his long term partner has failed to have the convictions quashed or the penalty reduced.

The pair had been together for about 10 years, were living together and had children.

“The relationship was a violent one,” a recent court judgment revealed.

In early 2019 the pair were drinking when the horror attack unfolded in the Mackay district.

“About 11.30pm (he) came onto the balcony where (she) was sitting and put a tea towel over her face and dragged her into their bedroom,” Court of Appeal president Justice Walter Sofronoff said in the judgment.

A rapist has tried to have his convictions overturned or his penalty reduced.

He ordered her to remove her clothes and then raped her.

“(She) was crying and telling him to stop. He did not stop,” Justice Sofronoff said.

“He told her that her crying was making him ‘horny’ and he continued.”

He later raped her a second time and told her “it would be easy to kill her” – he also ordered her to touch herself before orally raping her.

“(She) asked him to stop because she could not take it anymore,” Justice Sofronoff said.

He laid down and she went to check on their children.

“When she returned to bed (he) put his hand on her throat and strangled her,” Justice Sofronoff said.

“He said, ‘you know how easy it is to kill you right now. I can slit your throat’.”

He tried to claim to police the woman had “turned our role play … into a reality (because) she wants me out of the house” and while in custody on remand he called her multiple times to get her to withdraw the complaint.

The judgment stated the woman had tried to withdraw her complaint because she did not “want to go through court”.

In October 2020 a Mackay District Court jury found the man, then 47, guilty of rape, procuring a woman without her consent, committing an act of gross indecency, unlawful choking and breaching a domestic violence order.

He was jailed in April 2021 for eight years.

Self represented, the man applied to the Court of Appeal to overturn the convictions arguing the “verdicts were unsound”, or the penalty reduced on the grounds it was too harsh.

In assessing the case Justice Sofronoff found the woman’s evidence was “seemingly, clear and detailed”.

“It was evidence that was capable of acceptance by the jury,” he said, adding only the man’s version contracted her allegations.

“While plausible on its face, that story evaporated when it emerged that, in the course of trying to persuade the complainant to withdraw her complaint, it did not occur to the appellant to say to her that she should do so because her complaints were false.

“On the contrary, the whole tenor of what (he) said to (her) during those calls, for that purpose and otherwise, implied his consciousness of his own guilt.”

Justice Sofronoff said none of the 25 points the man argued to have his convictions quashed “have the slightest merit” and were “entirely without substance and beyond analysis”.

“(He) has a bad history of violence towards the (woman). The latest offences were also violent. They were protracted and cruel,” he said, adding the man had not shown “the slightest degree of remorse” for what his violence had done to his former partner.

Justice Sofronoff also found the penalty was not too harsh. Both applications were dismissed.