Gilston cook Christian Coade-Featherstone bragged about sex to mate during rape on Gold Coast
A Gilston cook raped a young woman while she was unconscious and claimed he was too drunk to remember if they were together — but texts bragging to a mate told a different story.
Crime and Court
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A GILSTON cook raped a young woman while she was unconscious and claimed he was too drunk to remember if they were together — but texts bragging to a mate revealed the truth.
Gold Coast Police seized Christian Lawrence Mark Coade-Featherstone’s phone and found identifying photos had been messaged to a friend on the night of the crime.
One text message at 3.53am read: “Just been f--king her as I please’, Southport District Court was told Wednesday.
Photos included the woman’s face and Coade-Featherstone’s tattooed hand groping her buttocks.
Coade-Featherstone, 30, pleaded guilty to rape, two counts of sexual assault and one count each of recording in breach of privacy and distributing prohibited digital recordings, dated February 9, 2017.
Coade-Featherstone’s supporters sat on one side of the room and the victim and her supporters sat opposite.
Summing up, Judge Catherine Muir said the woman had been invited to “get drunk” at a party at Coade-Featherstone’s home, after she smoked cannabis with a friend elsewhere.
The woman arrived and Coade-Featherstone was “quite drunk” and “grabbed her leg in a playful and flirtatious manner” during the revelry.
“At some point the complainant went to sit on the couch in the main house and fell asleep.
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She was lying on her right side in a foetal position,” Judge Muir said.
“She awoke to find you having sexual intercourse with her. She knew what was going on but she could not fully wake up and had no control over what was happening.
“She’s unsure how long this went on for.”
The woman spoke to her father the following day about her patchy recollections and he took her to the police station.
Judge Muir said the woman tried to find out what happened from Coade-Featherstone.
“She contacted you afterwards and asked you if you had sex on the relevant night and you said you were so drunk you couldn’t recall if you had or had not,” she said.
“Later on, the police executed a search warrant and you willingly provided a DNA sample to the police.
“The phone extraction from your phone shows two photographs sent by you to a friend … ”
In an interview with police, Coade-Featherstone claimed he “had no memory of having sex” with the girl he met four days prior, but “she would be up for it”.
Weighing up the penalty, Judge Muir said Coade-Featherstone expressed remorse in a letter and his family and friends spoke highly of him.
She said Coade-Featherstone had a short and irrelevant criminal history and he was “otherwise of good character”.
Coade-Featherstone was employed a cook and he had further work lined up.
Sobs echoed around the courtroom as Judge Muir spoke of the “devastating impact” of Coade-Featherstone’s actions.
Coade-Featherstone was sentenced to a seven year overarching jail term.
He will be eligible for parole on October 2, 2021.
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