Katherine Asiminaris: Ex Reiby prison guard jailed for sex offence
A guard who was supposed to be supervising a juvenile prisoner instead sent him love letters and had sex with him in his cell. The woman, who compared herself and her 15-year-old victim to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, will now be heading back to prison, this time as a convicted sex offender.
The Express
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A female guard has been jailed for engaging in a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy in a youth prison.
Katherine Asiminaris, 23 at the time of the offending, sent the boy love letters in which she called him her “Romeo” and signed off the letters as “Juliet”.
A court heard the boy believed he and the prison guard were “in love” and would remain together long-term after she “instigated a relationship”.
But after the Reiby Youth Justice Centre youth worker fell pregnant, the relationship quickly disintegrated.
The offending dates back to the late 1990s at the Reiby Youth Justice Centre near Airds on Sydney’s outskirts.
On Wednesday, a teary Asiminaris , now 46, was jailed for three years for two counts of sexual intercourse with a person aged 15-years-old, in circumstances of aggravation, namely that she worked as a youth officer at the prison, and one count of sexual intercourse with a person aged 15-years-old, which occurred after the boy’s release from juvenile detention.
The offending only came to light in June 2016, about 20 years later, following the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, when the former-inmate of Reiby and victim of these proceedings, were contacted.
Asiminaris, from Padstow, was studying a masters of developmental psychology when she took a job at the centre in 1996.
She was one of several officers who supervised detainees, locked and unlocked rooms, and made disciplinary decisions.
After working at Reiby for a month, Asiminaris instigated the relationship with the detainee by writing letters to him, either slipping them under the door or handing them to him, the court heard.
She signed off the letters as “Juliet” and he as “Romeo”, and the pair “expressed love for each other” and a “desire to be together”, the court heard.
Sometimes, Asiminaris would place cigarettes in the letters.
Judge Sarah Huggett conceded that as an “intelligent person”, she would have known that the relationship was “completely prohibited”.
In December 1996, when the boy was released on day-release for the first time, Asiminaris gave him her telephone number and told him to call her.
On numerous other instances of day-release, Asiminaris would pick up the boy from his mother’s home and take him for drives, the court heard.
One day she met him at a train station and the pair had sex in the back seat of a car.
This happened numerous other times, the court heard.
On another occasion, when the boy was living in a self-contained cell at Reiby nicknamed the “granny flat”, the pair had sex.
This also occurred a few other times, the court heard.
In May 1997, when the boy, still 15, was released from Reiby to his mother’s home, he stayed at Asiminaris ’ brother’s house overnight and the pair had sex.
Around the time of his 16th birthday, in 1997, Asiminaris and the boy moved into a house together.
He soon found out Asiminaris was pregnant.
They never discussed who the father was but the “relationship ended shortly thereafter”, the court heard.
The court heard the boy consented to all sexual activity with Asiminaris .
She was arrested and charged in May 2017, and pleaded not guilty to the offences.
The court heard Asiminaris still maintains her innocence, and even gave evidence in court that the boy forced sexual contact on her after he turned 16, making her the victim.
Judge Huggett said she had no evidence of remorse.
In a first trial, a jury could not agree on a verdict, resulting in a hung jury.
A retrial was ordered and a new jury found Asiminaris guilty of the offences on August 10, 2020
Asiminaris will now spend a minimum of one year and 10 months prison, and will be eligible for parole on June 5, 2022.