Mt Evelyn carpenter Patrick Simpkins pleads guilty to Ashwood aggravated burglary

He was carrying rope, semi-masked and in her bedroom. How a Mt Evelyn tradie intruder horrified a woman home alone.

Patrick Simpkins pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary. Facebook.

A rope-wielding, semi-masked Mt Evelyn carpenter who caused a young woman to fear she would be sexually assaulted after he crept into her bedroom has avoided a jail term.

Patrick Simpkins, 25, was sentenced in the County Court on Thursday to a five-year community correction order after pleading guilty to aggravated burglary.

The court heard Simpkins snuck into his victim’s Ashwood home early on March 15, 2020.

Simpkins removed a flyscreen, climbed through a window, crept to the woman’s bedroom and rifled through her wardrobe where he found lingerie and some rope.

The victim woke to find Simpkins crouched at the foot of her bed with the rope doubled over and with a bandana covering the bottom half of his face.

“What the f**k,” the victim said three times.

Simpkins, shirtless and still holding the rope, walked towards the victim on his tip toes while looking at her.

The court heard the victim believed Simpkins would “pounce on her” and feared she would be attacked or “sexually assaulted”.

Simpkins remained at the head of her bed and staring at her.

The victim, who told Simpkins to leave, feared her intruder was again “getting ready to pounce” after he remained in the room.

Simpkins, who stumbled out of the room and fled the house, handed himself into police the following month after he was caught on CCTV fleeing the property.

Simpkins, who gave a mostly no comment interview, was charged on April 23 last year.

The young woman said, in her victim impact statement read to the court, the ordeal was “really scary”.

“I was on high alert 24/7 and it was so exhausting …,” she said.

“I was terrified he would do something else.

“I escaped the house for the first week to stay with family and friends.

“I even took my cat with me when I left for the week to go stay with family, I was too scared to leave her in case he came back to hurt her.

“I had to have my dad’s dog stay with me as a guard dog, but even then I didn’t feel safe.

“I felt violated, that he had gone through my stuff, pulling things out of my bags.

“My belongings had been rifled through and left displayed, broken, for me to deal with.

“The things that he touched I had to get rid of.

“The memory of him laying the things out the way he did felt like a personal attack.

“I woke up on the night, (with Simpkins) in a red bandana, staring at me with wild red eyes … it is an image that is burnt into my memory … it’s horrible …

“It has impacted so many things I used to enjoy …

“I can’t go for walks where there are people, I get scared someone might be following me to attack me …

“He thought he could do what he wanted then, and he thought he had gotten away with it … I was so convinced he would come after me again.

“He was invincible, and I was just crumbling …

“I don’t know if I will ever forget the image of his masked face, and I don’t know if I will ever truly feel safe in my own home again.”

The defence submitted Simpkins committed the offending while heavily intoxicated but has since gone cold-turkey on alcohol.

The court heard Simpkins grew up in Melbourne’s outer east and worked as a self-employed carpenter.

Judge Douglas Trapnell, during last year’s plea hearing, denounced Simpkins’ offending and the “stupid idiotic men” who enter women’s homes uninvited.

“To say this is low-level (offending) is ludicrous quite frankly …,” Judge Trapnell said.

“To break into a woman’s home in the middle of the night and do what he did with the intent to do what he did is serious offending and I don’t think he understands that …

“It’s a got a 25 years maximum … there’s only life (sentence) above it …

“Just all the circumstances of what occurred … it’s no way it’s a low-level example.”

Simpkins was also ordered to undertake 600 hours of unpaid community work and undertake alcohol treatment and attend a men’s behavioural change program.

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