Monash University student Ye Zhao has rape sentence slashed after appeal
A FORMER Monash University student, who assured a woman he had “no bad intentions” before raping her, has had his jail sentence slashed.
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A FORMER Monash University student who assured a woman he had “no bad intentions” before taking her back to his Hawthorn apartment and raping her, has had his jail sentence reduced.
Ye Zhao, 27, was found guilty in September 2017 of assaulting the victim over two separate incidents at his Hawthorn apartment in 2015.
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He was sentenced to 13 years and six months imprisonment, with a non-parole period of eight years.
But Victoria’s Court of Appeal (VSCA) recently found the term excessive and re-sentenced him to nine-and-a-half years’ jail, with a minimum of six-and-a-half years.
He will be deported to China after the minimum sentence as his visa remains cancelled and is still an “unlawful non-citizen” of Australia.
Zhao chatted to the victim via an online chat platform, WeChat, and arranged to collect her from a cafe so she could help him “tidy up” his apartment on October 31, 2015.
But he instead performed oral sex on the woman and apologised immediately after the act.
Zhao then contacted the victim three weeks later and suggested she may want to be part of a business promotion he was organising.
He visited her residence, but she refused to let him inside.
Zhao then arranged to pick her and her friend up from a restaurant in Chinatown later that evening.
He dropped the friend off, but drove the victim to his apartment where the pair argued because she refused to be Zhao’s girlfriend — he then raped her.
Zhao was convicted by a County Court jury last year on five charges of rape and one of sexual assault.
Only 12 of the 208 sentences imposed for rape in the five years prior to 2015-16 exceeded the jail term Zhao received.
VSCA documents said each of the individual sentences for rape imposed on him in this case, ranging between seven and eight-and-a-half years, was “manifestly excessive”.
The court also found 18 months’ imprisonment on a charge relating to Zhao touching the victims’ breasts was also “manifestly excessive”.
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