Hunt for teen’s rapist: ‘People like him don’t just do these things once’

HE raped a teenager 10 years ago as her mother waited outside. As police up the search for Peta Butler’s rapist, they warn he may have other victims.

SHE remembers the stubble on his face rough on hers, as — deaf to her protests — he wordlessly raped her.

“He never said anything ... I felt his face stubble. He had face stubble, feeling that. And I still remember the smell of him. I still remember,” Peta Butler said as she relived the rape she endured at just 16.

What she will never forget is the bulging, blue eyes of her obese attacker.

“Those eyes ... I remember them popping out,” she said. “He was extremely obese. But those eyes ... once you see them, you can’t get past them.”

Now Peta, and police trying to catch her attacker, are hoping someone else remembers his face.

Queensland child protection police fear the man who raped Peta in a Toowoomba motel room in 2005 when she was just 16 may have other victims, and have released a computer-generated image of what they think he looks like.

The image of the man, known only as “Thommo” comes after Peta’s revelations about how her mother took her on a “girl’s weekend” to Toowoomba, plied her with alcohol, and sent her into the bedroom of her cheap hotel room where “Thommo” raped her.

“Those eyes ... I remember them popping out”: Rape suspect "Thommo" computer-generated image. Picture: Supplied

Police fear Peta is not his only victim.

“It’s likely he has hurt other women. People like Thommo don’t just do these things once,” Senior Constable Jodie Bell — the first officer Peta trusted with her story — said.

Therese Butler, was in February jailed for four years, suspended after 12 months, after pleading guilty to procuring a child for carnal knowledge.

A damning “confession” phone call with Peta almost a decade after the attack helped convict Therese for her role in the rape.

In it, Therese, justified arranging the rape, and waiting outside a door metres away smoking cigarettes as it happened, saying: “Yeah, it was still rape, but you were 16. I wouldn’t let him touch you under, under 16, no way.”

In the call, Therese also refers to herself as Thommo’s victim, saying she would like to kill him for “manipulating” her.

Therese was a “serial online dater” who had contact with Thommo for two years before the attack, Peta revealed in interviews with The Courier Mail and A Current Affair.

There said Thommo had threatened to cut contact with her unless she could find him a “younger version of herself” for him to have sex with.

“Groomed” for two years, she offered up her daughter.

Therese spoke about Thommo like they were best friends, her daughter said, but the day he raped Peta was only the second time Therese and Thommo had actually met face-to-face.

Peta said her rapist was aged 45 to 50. He was caucasian and had grey hair, shaved close. She remembers him being a big man: “very fat, extremely obese”.

On the day he attacked her, he arrived at the low-budget Toowoomba hotel room wearing and “expensive suit”.

At 5am, the morning after the attack, and after staying the night in the room with them, the man drove mother and devastated daughter to a bus station in silence.

Peta Butler extracted a damning confession from her mother, who is now in jail for her role in organising the rape. Picture: Adam Head

Peta recalls the car had cream-coloured leather seats and seemed “expensive”.

Detective Bell believes Therese knows more about “Thommo” than she told police, or her daughter.

“To actively go out and seek someone online who obviously has children and then make arrangements and say to that person, ‘if you don’t bring your daughter here for me to rape then I am going to break up with you’ — he doesn’t do that just once,” she told ACA.

“I believe there are probably other victims out there.”

Police hope people who lived in the Toowoomba area 10 years ago might recognise the man from the computer-generated image and description they have released.

The man would now being in his 50s. It is believed he also used an email address similar to [e-mail].

The man is described as being in his mid-to-late 40s at the time, extremely obese, around 175 centimetres tall with a shaved head, stubble and distinctive bulging, blue eyes.

Anyone who recognises the man’s description, or who may be able to help with his identity, should call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Therese Butler, who tried to justify her role in the rape by saying she waited until her daughter was 16. Picture: Supplied

Originally published as Hunt for teen’s rapist: ‘People like him don’t just do these things once’