Domestic violence NSW: Faces behind crimes against women
They’re the unspeakable crimes against women that have sent shockwaves through the community. Some were unprovoked acts, while others were part of ongoing domestic violence abuse.
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Violence against women in Australia has escalated over the years becoming an epidemic in our country.
Whether it’s an unprovoked attack or domestic violence abuse, the epidemic has surpassed terrorism in the number of lives taken. On average one woman is murdered in Australia each week.
NSW has recorded some of the most brutal cases against women, from the Sydney dentist murdered by an ex-boyfriend and stuffed in a suitcase to the Central Coast monster jailed for 27 years for ongoing the rape and torture of women.
Domestic violence is also on the rise, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealing that one in six Australian women aged 18 years and over experienced partner violence since the age of 15.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic violence has increased in frequency and severity.
A study by the Australian Institute of Criminology, which surveyed 15,000 woman, compared their experiences of domestic violence in the six months before and after the lockdown period.
Most women who suffered violence at the hands of their partner before said the violence had become more frequent and severe due to victims being forced to stay home with abusive partners and an increase in alcohol consumption.
Here is a look at the faces behind some of the most horrific violence cases against women in NSW.
Man jailed for raping and torturing a woman he met on a dating site
Adam Robert Hall was convicted of detaining and raping a woman repeatedly over a terrifying 12 hours in Macmasters Beach on the Central Coast.
In April 2020, Hall was sentenced to 22 years with a non parole period of 16 and a half years in Gosford District Court.
The court heard Hall and the victim met on the dating site Plenty of Fish where he described himself as an “alpha male, dominant, polyamorous”.
He and the victim had been dating for 14 months when they were staying at a house at Macmasters Beach.
During the stay, Hall snapped during an argument and threatened to kill her. He pushed her down stairs, punched her in the face and cut an 8cm-long wound to her upper right thigh.
Over 12 hours, Hall subjected his girlfriend to what District Court Judge Tanya Bright described as “humiliating and degrading sexual acts”.
The court heard he continued the sustained abuse while he watched pornography. At one point during the ordeal he dragged her into the garage and got a pair of pliers and a hammer. He told her if she did not comply with his specific demands he would pull out her teeth with the pliers or break her toes with the hammer.
When Hall fell asleep at 4.30am, the victim was able to flee and went to a nearby house for help. Hall eventually handed himself in.
Matthew Warren jailed for serious domestic violence offences
A man who unleashed 24 hours of abuse including choking, elbowing and kneeing his victim during a 24-hour ordeal has been jailed.
In October 2020 Matthew Warren, 23, was found guilty and sentenced to 16 months prison for a range of charges including assault occasioning actual bodily harm and intentionally choke person.
The court heard Warren, of Ambarvale, had been at a party in Rosemeadow in November 2019 when a woman arrived to pick him. He was assaulted at the party and later blamed the woman.
Court facts stated he ordered the woman to drive him to Rosemeadow McDonald’s before he punched her several times in the head and arms while waiting in the drive thru, agreed police facts reveal.
He then made her go inside his home where he elbowed, kneed and punched the woman to the back of the head causing a wound as he dragged her by the hair.
Warren also put his hands around the woman’s neck, leaving her struggling to breath, and hit her with a baton in the legs and arms.
A few days later, he called the victim more than 40 times demanding she provide her password to Facebook or he would burn her house down.
He was eventually arrested after trying to hide from police in the bush.
Evil and sadistic rapist jailed for 20 years
Aron Goodrem won’t see the light of day until 2033 after detaining, bashing, raping and torturing his victims.
In October 2020, Goodrem was convicted and jailed for 20 years, with a non parole period of 13 years, for inflicting horrific violence, suffocating torture and controlling abusive behaviour on six woman over a decade.
The court heard how the former Central Coast landscaper unleashed years of abuse controlling all aspects of his victims lives. One victims told the court how she once felt suicide was the “only way” to escape.
Horrific stories from his victims were revealed in court, including on one occasion where a pregnant woman’s hands were tied to the stairwell of a South Penrith home. Goodrem became enraged when he was told “you are going to be a deadbeat dad”.
He threw a cigarette lighter at the woman, told her to “shut the f**k up” and stubbed her chest with a cigarette three times.
Goodrem’s horrific abuse on a Sydney woman he met on Tinder saw him rape her on top of the washing machine.
Another woman he raped for 20 minutes after taping her mouth with duct tape, who later escaped his clutches by fleeing in the middle of the night.
“(He) just moved from victim to victim, with the same pattern of behaviour, the same utter disrespect for women, the same controlling behaviour,” Judge John Pickering said.
Man dragged Dubbo woman into oncoming traffic
A man has been jailed after using a cricket bat to savagely attack a woman he repeatedly punched, grabbed by the hair and dragged across a main road in Dubbo.
Gavin Kevin Weldon, who pleaded guilty to a string of domestic violence offences, was convicted and sentenced to two years and three months in jail in October 2020.
Court documents revealed Weldon, 38, had only been released from jail for two days when the brutal attack occurred. He started arguing with a woman in her house before he grabbed a cricket bat and hit her legs with it.
When she tried to call for help, Weldon said “I’ll kill you, you slut”.
Police facts state the woman left the house and was followed by Weldon who grabbed a handful of her hair and “marched her across the road in front of oncoming traffic”.
He punched the woman three times and dragged her off the road by the hair before police arrived.
“No assault happened, we were just arguing,” Weldon told officers.
Weldon wept in Dubbo Local Curt when he entered pleas of guilty to intimidation, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and AVO breach charges.
Unprovoked attack on pregnant woman at Parramatta cafe
The brutal attack on a pregnant woman at the busy Bay Vista Cafe sent shockwaves throughout Sydney.
In October 2020, Stipe Lozina, 43, was sentenced to two years jail for assaulting a pregnant woman in Parramatta District Court.
The court heard Lozina, who has a long history of mental health issues, swung at the 32-year-old woman more than a dozen times during the unprovoked attack in October 2019.
Lozina approached the woman while she was sitting with two friends, celebrating the upcoming birth of her child, and asked for a dollar.
“You Muslims raped my mum,” he said before attacking the woman who was 38-weeks pregnant. She fell to the ground and tried to protect her stomach. CCTV of the horrific attack then captured Lozina stomping on her head.
The attack was stopped when a witness intervened and pulled Lozina away.
Judge Chris Craigie SC said the assault had the “grave potential to cause very serious harm to the victim and her unborn child”.
Monster jailed for raping and torturing women
A monster jailed for 27 years for raping and torturing various women he lived with over two decades has been sentenced to a further four years in prison.
In 2018, Graham Thomas Sales was sentenced after pleading guilty to six counts of sexual and aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, common assault and two counts of threatening an officer.
Judge Penelope Wass said “sexual sadistic intercourse” was part of Sales’ “sexual repertoire” and his actions motivated by “cruelty”.
The 2018 sentence came after Sales was given 36 years jail, with a non-parole period of 27 years, for the physical, sexual and psychological abuse of women he lived with between 1988 and his arrest in 2014.
He was found guilty of 21 offences, many depraved and sadistic in nature, including raping women with household objects, forcing them to eat their dinner off the floor and hogtying them and putting them face down in the bath.
The court heard while many of the offences happened in the 1980s and 90s, many of his victims had been too afraid to come forward and lived in fear for much of their adult lives after Sales made threats to kill them.
Tinder stalker shot dead after trying to kill female surgeon
Paul Lambert was shot dead after trying to kill a female surgeon in Port Macquarie in 2016.
The doctor had just reheated dinner and walked into the bedroom of her home when her former lover Paul Lambert sprang out of a wardrobe.
The 28-year-old had ended the relationship which began with a Tinder date a few months earlier. She ended it after his behaviour became erratic and possessive.
Lambert 36, refused to believe it as over and on November 3, 2016, he broke into the home.
Lambert grabbed the woman and stabbed her in the chest, arms and legs. There were 11 wounds to her body before Lambert poured petrol over her.
The liquid allowed her to slip his grasp and she raced for help and a neighbour came to her assistance before Lambert fled.
Following a police pursuit, Lambert lunged at officers with a knife and he was shot.
A Coroner’s inquest later cleared police of any wrongdoing. The inquest heard that Lambert had been the subject of 10 interim or full apprehended domestic violence orders in relation to five women between 2003 and 2016.
Life imprisonment for the murder of a schoolteacher
It was the crime that shocked the nation and broke the heart of the town of Leeton in the Riverina.
In 2016, deranged murderer Vincent Stanford was sentenced to life without release for the brutal rape and murder of teacher Stephanie Scott.
When Justice Robert Allan Hulme handed down the maximum sentence to the school cleaner, he described Stephanie’s murder just days before her wedding as in the “worst category”.
Stanford raped and bashed to death the 26-year-old drama teacher at Leeton High School on Easter Sunday in 2015.
Ms Scott had gone to school to prepare work ahead of her honeymoon when Stanford grabbed her from behind and dragged her into a storeroom. In the early hours of the following morning he dumped her body at the Cocoparra National Park and set it on fire.
Stanford was arrested after police searched his house and found items belonging to Stephanie. He later told police he had wanted to kill someone ever since he was a young boy.
“The harm caused to Ms Scott’s family, fiance, friends, fellow teachers, students and the Leeton community in general is incalculable,” Justice Hulme said during the sentencing.
“There can be no question that the offender is a highly disturbed individual.”
Stanford’s identical twin brother Marcus was sentenced to 15 months jail in August for being an accessory after the fact to Ms Scott’s murder after pawning her engagement ring.
Dentist murdered in a hotel room by ex-boyfriend
Glenmore Park Preethi Reddy dentist was attending a dental convention in the inner-city in March 2019 when she bumped into her ex-boyfriend Harshwardhan Narde.
A few days later, police found her stabbed body in the boot of her car parked in Kingsford in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. She had been stuffed inside a suitcase.
The day before her body was discovered, Narde had been killed in a car accident just south of Tamworth.
Police believe Narde drove from Tamworth to see Preethi and win her back at the convention. When she refused, police believe he stabbed her multiple times in a hotel room.
He was caught on CCTV footage buying a large suitcase and garbage bags as well as towels and cleaning products.
A coroner closed the matter in June 2020 finding that Preethi had been murdered by Narde.
North Curl Curl stalker murder
Paul Mulvihill was jailed for at least 22 years after the murder of Rachelle Yeo in North Curl Curl in 2012.
Ms Yeo was stabbed to death with a large kitchen knife at her flat after ending an affair with Mulvihill who was a work colleague.
Mulvihill, who was married with three kids, was found guilty in 2014 after the Supreme Court in Sydney heard he could not handle being rejected by his workmate at a pharmaceutical company.
For months he stalked and harassed the 31-year-old Ms Yeo, with constant phone calls and emails. It got to the point where she had to be escorted to her car after work.
Her friends told Mulvihill’s murder trial that he threatened to “take her down” and demanded to know her new address.
On July 16, 2012, he got into her flat apartment and stabbed her in the neck and chest.
Her neighbours called triple-0 after hearing a woman screaming “oh my god, oh my god” and yelling for someone to call the police.
Mulvihill pleaded not guilty on the basis of self-defence, but a jury took less than two hours to convict him of murder.
After the trial, Ms Yeo’s father Roger Yeo said no woman deserved to die simply for ending a relationship.
“She didn’t deserve to be stalked or hunted or beaten or killed,” he said.