Liam Huxley jailed for raping a girl, 15, at a birthday on the Central Coast
Never-before-released details of a young girl’s harrowing ordeal, in which she was raped at a birthday party on a rural Central Coast property, have emerged during her attacker’s sentencing.
Liam Huxley had returned from a year-and-a-half overseas where he was using ecstasy most weekends and loved getting drunk at any opportunity.
He had been invited to a friend’s 21st birthday party at a rural property near Ourimbah in October 2017 where he was hoping to score with a girl he’d had his eye on.
But when she turned up on the arm of another bloke he started drinking hard and tried not to show his disappointment.
He struck up a conversation with a girl, who he said told him she was 17, and they flirted.
She was cold, so he offered his flannelette shirt.
He sat with arm around her shoulder, she touched his leg.
But she started feeling unwell from the grog and went into a cabin on the property to lie down on a couch.
Huxley, a well respected junior soccer referee, followed her in and lifted her legs across his lap.
He started to assault her with his hand until someone else walked in and the girl, who was actually just 15, left for the main house to go to bed.
She sent a text to a friend complaining she had been “touched”.
After 12 drinks and one “cone” of cannabis that evening, Huxley wanted to get his shirt back and entered the room where the girl was asleep under the covers.
He was followed into the room by one of the girl’s friends who wanted to check on her.
The girl woke up and asked her friend to leave because she wanted to speak to Huxley about what happened earlier.
But he walked around to the side of the bed, climbed on top of her and raped her “vigorously”, scratching her back, a court heard.
The shocked girl called a friend and told another via Facebook Messanger “he f...d me” before her friend’s mum came to collect them both.
During the ride home the girl disclosed what happened to her by typing notes into her phone. Her friend’s mother then offered to take her to hospital where she underwent a Sexual Assault Investigation Kit (SAIK) examination and spoke to police.
Huxley, a former Gosford High School student who lost interest in studies and was expelled in Year 9, was later arrested and charged with four counts of aggravated sexual assault.
In January this year, on the first day of his trial Huxley pleaded guilty to two counts of having sexual intercourse with a person aged between 14 and 16.
The other charges were withdrawn.
Huxley, now aged 22, was yesterday sentenced in Gosford District Court to a year and eight months jail with a non-parole period of 10 months.
Fighting back tears Huxley, who had been on bail, was led into custody.
Reading from the girl’s victim impact statement, Judge Tanya Bright said the rape caused her to “throw up my meals”, quit her job and became alienated from her friends.
Judge Bright said it was the “hardest thing she had been through” and it would likely affect her for “the rest of her life”.
In sentencing Huxley, Judge Bright said his offending was below the high range of objective seriousness, he had good prospects of rehabilitation and had come to “fully understand his offending”.
He will be eligible for parole in March 2020.
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