Richard Sladek challenges his rape conviction in the Court of Appeal

A former Parkville youth worker convicted of savagely raping a woman challenged his conviction and the Court of Appeal’s ruling is now out.

Richard Sladek is a free man after the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction for rape and acquitted him.

A former Parkville youth worker jailed for savagely a woman is a free man after the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction.

Richard Sladek, 65, was sentenced in the County Court at Melbourne in March last year to a minimum 37-month jail term after a jury found him guilty of rape and not guilty on attempted rape.

Sladek sought leave to appeal against the conviction and in a ruling on Tuesday, the higher court set aside his sentence and acquitted him.

He maintained in his police interview and during trial that he and the complainant had consensual sex in late 2018.

The complainant disputed his version of events and said Sladek anally raped her after turning her on her stomach.

The Court of Appeal judges agreed with Sladek that the jury at trial could not reach inconsistent verdicts on both charges, given that the charges arose out of the same alleged incidents.

His lawyers submitted there was insufficient facts to explain the different verdicts which indicated the jury had reached a compromise verdict on the charge of rape.

The Court of Appeal has quashed the conviction of former Parkville youth worker Richard Sladek who was charged with savagely raping a woman.

The prosecution submitted that the acquittal on the charge of attempted rape did not mean that the jury had disbelieved the complainant or rejected her account. Rather, the prosecution said the not guilty verdict demonstrated that the jury had a reasonable doubt about at least one of the elements of that offence.

The Court of Appeal referred to the evidence at trial of forensic medicine registrar, Dr Kathryn Ramsay, who said that it was not possible to determine whether the injury to the complainant’s anus was a result of intercourse.

She said it could also have been the result of other causes, including the day-to-day passage of bowel actions.

Dr Ramsay said that, in cases of penetration of the anus, it was quite common to see no detectable injury, regardless of whether the penetration was consensual or non-consensual.

The Court of Appeal judges said it was not possible to determine how or why the jury came to such inconsistent verdicts on the two charges.

“It is possible that the jury, having regard to a number of the issues raised in respect of the credibility and reliability of the evidence given by the complainant, sought to accommodate those issues by reaching a compromise in its conclusions concerning the two charges,” they said.

The jury’s acquittal on one charge necessarily and unequivocally contradicted a finding of guilt against Sladek for rape, the judges said.