Moolap man Kevin Braunton showed up at ex-partner’s home following months of stalking
Following months of “malicious” threats that he was going to leak her intimate images, a Moolap man showed up at his ex-partner’s home with duct tape and a box cutter.
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A Moolap man targeted his ex-partner with “cruel, persistent” threats he was going to share intimate images with colleagues and family before he showed up at her home with a box cutter and duct tape.
Kevin Braunton, 50, held his hands tightly over his ears as the Geelong Magistrates Court was told about the “malicious” stalking of his ex-partner in August and September this year, which included multiple threats sent from several false email addresses.
The stalking came to a terrifying end on the night of September 30 when the woman and her daughter heard noises at the front of their Curlewis home and looked up to find him tapping on a window.
The woman screamed as Braunton ran around to the unlocked rear door and let himself in, armed with a box cutter with its blade not showing, and told her to, “sit on the floor, I don’t want to hurt you”.
Braunton is well known in Victoria’s “big cat” community – those who try to track down the large panther-like animals they believe stalk our wilderness. He pleaded guilty to all charges, including stalking and calling in a bomb hoax to a seven-storey Melbourne building.
In the two months before he showed up at the woman’s home, Braunton bombarded her with countless threats, including telling her that if she continued to ignore his calls, texts and emails, “very, very, very bad things have to happen” and to “see what happens”.
It started when the woman received an email from a company purporting to be Scarlet Blue, a “private escort directory”, which thanked her for her application and informed her intimate images had been “forwarded to private production companies”.
She would later receive emails from a number of escort agencies, with one company asking her to confirm the “gender, age and nationality” preferences of her audition partner.
An email purporting to be from OnlyFans sent her a long message warning her that her account had been shared along with “work, personal and home details” and a “guy called Kevin” had shared her intimate images and her contact details across Geelong venues.
In early September, Braunton created a dating profile on Plenty of Fish that included the woman’s home address and contact details.
While pretending to be one of the false escort companies, Braunton told the woman “there was more of this to come”.
By the time this part of the charges were read to the court, Braunton was on the floor of the room at the Melbourne Remand Centre and appeared to be crying as he told the court he was “sorry”.
Speaking directly to Magistrate Simon Guthrie, Braunton said he “made those myself to send out”, noting he had created false email addresses, but that he “wouldn’t send those photos to anyone”.
“I’m ashamed of the person I have become,” Braunton said.
In a victim-impact statement read to the court, the woman said she is in a “constant state of being fearful, stressed and anxious”.
“Loud noises knocking on my door (and) private phone calls increase my fear,” the woman said.
“I do not feel safe going places by myself.”
The court heard Braunton killed a cyclist on the Great Ocean Road in February 2021 that left him with severe PTSD. The cyclist was on the wrong side of the road and Braunton was cleared of wrongdoing.
The cyclist was riding as part of a community event organised by Bicycle Network Victoria, which the court heard Braunton blamed.
A month after the fatal collision, Braunton called the network and pretended to be the deceased cyclist and later told them he was going to “f---ing bomb the building, you c---”.
No suspicious packages were found and the threat was ruled a hoax.
Braunton’s lawyer, Ryan Robertson, said the stalking was “bizarre” but painted a picture of him “getting further and further unwell”.
He added Braunton, who was still on the floor at this point, was “struggling in a prison environment” and asked the court to consider the 35 days he has spent on remand as time-served, meaning Braunton could walk free in a matter of days.
Prosecutor Rebecca Gersden said the month on remand “does not adequately address the severity of the impact” he had on the victim.
“Distribution of intimate images gets to the core of why (revenge porn) legislation was introduced,” Ms Gersden said.
“That cannot be underestimated.”
Referring to the bomb hoax, Mr Guthrie said his actions “go far beyond a practical joke”.
As for the stalking, Mr Guthrie said it would have been “torturous” for the woman.
“You degraded this individual in pursuit of what? Revenge?”
Mr Guthrie said the offending was “carefully planned, it was cruel, it was malicious and persistent”.
While Mr Guthrie noted the emails were not from the real escort agencies and sites, the woman had no way of knowing that.
“The very persistent nature of these sites sending photographs … and the consequences of that wouldn’t be too hard to imagine,” he said.
Braunton was sentenced to four months in jail, with 35 days marked as served, and will be placed on a 15-month community corrections order once he is released.
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