Police wouldn’t give us photo ID after Sampieri’s abusive calls, past victim claims
A past victim of the man at the centre of an alleged sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl has accused the justice and parole system of protecting him now they did when he raped his first victim in 2012.
NSW
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A past victim of the man at the centre of a horrific alleged sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl has accused the justice and parole system of protecting him now just as they did when he raped his first victim in 2012.
Mother-of-two Kristina C, who was one of the hundreds of women targeted by Anthony Sampieri with sickening sexually violent phone calls, accused authorities of once again ignoring the safety of women.
She revealed her outrage that the 54-year-old convicted rapist was on parole and able to allegedly attack the young girl in a Kogarah toilet cubicle.
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Ms C, who has asked that her surname not be used, spoke out as The Daily Telegraph revealed that Sampieri’s parole officers knew he was using the drug ice again but did not revoke his parole before he allegedly sexually assaulted a schoolgirl in a dance school toilet two weeks ago.
She said that she and three of her workmates in a Wollongong office who were abused by Sampieri in chilling phone calls in 2012 had asked police for a photograph of him at the time.
“We were fearful for our safety because he knew what we looked like, he knew where we worked,” Ms C, 44, said.
“But the police wouldn’t give us a photograph of him or even show us what he looked like for privacy reasons.
“They were protecting him just as he has been protected now.”
Police have begun a comprehensive review of how they handled that case in 2012 after claims Sampieri raped a 60-year-old woman while they had postponed charging him with making the disgusting phone calls.
He pleaded guilty to the rape and using a carriage service to offend and was jailed for a maximum of seven years in the District Court.
The court was told at the time that his “sex binge” had been sparked by using ice and escalated to rape.
Corrections minister David Elliott has ordered an investigation into how Sampieri was released on parole in September last year.
Police have launched their own investigation into why a leading senior constable at Kogarah Police Station did not charge Sampieri last month with making an obscene phone call when he was reported by a local store owner.
The Daily Telegraph has been told that a warning came up against Sampieri’s name on the police COPS computer system to alert the officer he was on parole but no action was taken.
Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has said that Sampieri should have been charged.
Ms C said she thought police had not taken the obscene phone calls in 2012 seriously.
Sampieri chose his victims through newspaper ads.
“The police said he was just a dirty pervert caller who was getting his jollies off,” Ms C said.
“When a couple of us girls expressed that we were concerned that this kind of behaviour very well may escalate and someone might get hurt, police said he didn’t think the guy was a threat.
“Well, someone got hurt. We were gutted.”
The former sales consultant who now lives on the Gold Coast said the 2012 rape could have been avoided had the police taken action sooner. She said she feared that had allegedly happened again.
She echoed the criticisms of the legal system made by another of Sampieri’s Wollongong victims that it protected the accused and not the women.
She said she had recorded the call he made to her at 5pm on October 8, 2012. The District Court was told he spoke about his c. k.
“He introduced himself as Ron. I put him on speaker so I could record him,” she said.
‘The call was sexually violent.”
In 2012, Sampieri lured the 60-year-old woman, a second-hand furniture dealer, to his flat on the pretext he had some furniture to sell.
“He could have made an appointment with any of us to meet regarding a sale and we would have fallen into his trap,” Ms C said.
“That’s why we wanted to know what he looked like but the police would not tell us.”
Sampieri is in Prince of Wales Hospital under guard with liver cancer and injuries inflicted by two bystanders when they allegedly caught him in the toilet.
He has not been charged.
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