Dead Polish nanny’s rapist could face 16 years’ jail

A court has seen graphic before-and-after photos of a Polish nanny who was savagely raped and beaten. She later died in a car accident. Her attacker faces up to 16 years’ jail.

A CAREER criminal who raped a Polish nanny on her evening walk north of Brisbane almost four years ago could be jailed for up to 16 years for the violent attack on the woman, who later died in a car accident.

Travis Alexander Manwarring, 31, appeared in Brisbane Brisbane District Court over the rape of the 24-year-old at Petrie on November 25, 2016.

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The man was found guilty of rape following a trial earlier this month, and had pleaded guilty to assault.

The victim, who had never travelled outside her village in Poland before coming to Australia, worked as a nanny in Petrie and used to walk the area each night for exercise.

At 8.30 on the night she was raped, she stopped at the corner of Dayboro and Beeville roads, where Manwarring grabbed her, removed her clothing, raped and bashed her.

After the ordeal she ran to a nearby house in complete shock and inconsolable.

She had been beaten so badly she required facial surgery and initially lost all memory of the incident.

Two photos were on Wednesday shown to the court — the first, of the slight woman beaming from ear to ear on her adventure in Australia.

“She was clearly a young woman happy with life,” the court was told about the 24-year-old.

The second photograph depicted her beaten face, swollen black eyes and huge defensive wounds on her hands.

“After he assaulted her, he (Manwarring) thought she was dead, she was in such a state...” Crown prosecutor Stephen Kissick told the court.

“He bent down, she gasped and he panicked and left.”

Mr Kissick described the attack as “gratuitous public violence on a young woman doing nothing more than her regular fitness, enjoying an Australian evening”.

He asked the court to impose a sentence of 16 years’ jail.

The court heard Manwarring had argued throughout the trial that the sex was consensual.

Manwarring’s defence barrister Damian Walsh said the pair had met on three occasions prior to the rape.

He said the facts of the case were very unusual, it was not a “stranger” rape of a woman unknown to her attacker, and he argued for a sentence of eight years’ jail.

“They met by chance on the evening of the assault and rape,” Mr Walsh said.

“The defendant and the complainant on the evening in question engaged in both conversation and sexual conduct.”

Mr Walsh said the jury found the woman was assaulted after the rape, not prior to the incident in order to make her submit.

The nanny returned to Poland after the attack and died in a car crash in February 2017, three months after the rape.

She had seen her doctor earlier that day.

Mr Kissick asked the court to find the woman had committed suicide in the crash.

The court heard Manwarring had a long history of violence, even being convicted of assault as a child.

The court heard he has been involved in two assaults on prisoners while behind bars and coward-punched a man in Sawtell, NSW, in 2009.

Manwarring also assaulted a doctor and wardsman in another incident, the court was told.

Manwarring will be sentenced at a later date after psychiatric evidence is obtained by the court.