Raymond John Froome faces County Court over attacks on women, animal cruelty
A drug-addled dad with a history of violence was arrested after strangling a woman. Months later he strangled and assaulted another woman in a reign-of-terror that included bashing her pet cat to death.
Just months after he strangled a Geelong woman, a convicted rapist terrorised yet another victim – choking and assaulting her and bashing her pet cat to death.
Raymond John Froome, 44, appeared via videolink in the County Court at Geelong on Tuesday, having earlier pleaded guilty to charges including recklessly causing injury, common assault, unlawful assault of a female and aggravated animal cruelty.
Crown prosecutor Danielle Guesdon told the court Froome met the first victim in December 2023 and later that month strangled her for two minutes, leaving her unable to breathe and feeling dazed.
The next day her neck was swollen and sore, and Froome kicked her out of his Norlane home.
She was later hospitalised for unrelated reasons, and disclosed the strangulation to staff, suffering ongoing neck pain and difficulty swallowing.
Froome was arrested in January and in August met his next victim through a friend.
That month, he strangled her, assaulted her, threatened to “end” and kill her, and bashed her pet cat to death with a “piece of wood”.
The woman spent days looking for her pet, searching the streets and leaving food out, before Froome confessed to killing it and dug it up.
After being arrested, Froome denied any offending towards the first victim.
He admitted to killing the second victim’s cat, but denied strangling her – although hospital staff had taken photographs of her neck.
In her victim impact statement, read by Ms Guesdon, the first victim said she was scared to go out, and had “shied away from men” since the incident.
“I can sleep better knowing he’s in jail,” she said of Froome.
The second victim said in her statement, also read by Ms Guesdon, that she struggled to maintain her day-to-day lifestyle and felt “uneasy all the time”.
She said she saw “a lot of dark shadows in the corner of my eye, standing over my bed” and was going to get tested for sleep paralysis.
“I feel like Ray is actually standing behind me, torturing me,” she wrote, adding: “everywhere I go, I feel like he’s there.”
Froome had history of violence towards intimate partners that spanned the country, the court heard, having been convicted of rape in 2010 and assault occasioning bodily harm in 2020, both in Queensland.
Barrister Maddy Grant, for Froome, told the court her client had moved to Victoria in 2023 to “meet his son” and had remained abstinent for a few months before moving into a Norlane house “where drug use was rife”.
Froome, who was originally from Western Australia, had an upbringing of “disruption and disadvantage”, Ms Grant said, submitting it ought to offer some level of moderation to his moral culpability, along with clinical diagnoses of anti-social personality disorder, bipolar disorder and a mild cognitive disorder.
Ms Grant told the court Froome had shown “evidence of some remorse” and her client had “acknowledged his conduct would have been traumatising for both victims”.
While his prospects could be seen as guarded, Ms Grant said there was “some optimism”, given he’d been completing courses in custody and his medication voluntarily, showing he hadn’t “lost the motivation to engage in therapeutic programs”.
She urged the court not to impose a crushing sentence, given there was a “real risk of institutionalisation”.
Judge Douglas Trapnell will sentence Froome at a later date.
Originally published as Raymond John Froome faces County Court over attacks on women, animal cruelty
