Evgeni Skliar: Husband punched wife’s online lover in singing sting
After he found a music man’s sex texts to his wife, an angry McKinnon husband set up a revenge plan to catch the cheating crooner.
South East
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A jealous husband who bashed his wife’s secret online lover in a fake singing sting has faced court.
Evgeni Skliar viciously punched his partner’s paramour after organising a sham meeting to discuss employing the victim as a vocalist in a band.
The 48-year-old McKinnon man pleaded guilty to two assaults, theft and using a carriage service to harass charges at the online Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.
The court heard in 2019 an angry Skliar discovered his wife was having the virtual affair with the man and sought revenge.
He found out about the sex texting that had been happening for months when he started to notice she would take her phone to bed and try and keep it shielded from him.
He uncovered a series of sexually explicit messages sent between the two on the Facebook Messenger platform, and plotted a payback.
In August 2019 he put a post on a band website saying he was a producer asking for potential singers to contact him, knowing that the other man was a vocalist.
A few weeks later the victim responded and Skliar arranged a meet at a Dandenong South industrial site.
When the lover turned up Skliar made small talk before asking to borrow the man’s phone to call a fellow producer to let them inside a unit.
He asked for privacy and walked away, ostensibly to talk to his colleague, but in reality he was checking the Messenger streams involving his wife.
Skliar then returned and launched a tirade of punches at the man’s head, face and ears before he managed to run away.
He caught up with him and attacked him again, but nearby workers had heard the commotion and forcefully detained Skliar until police arrived.
It didn’t end there though.
Two weeks later Skliar sent a barrage of threatening text messages to the victim, stating he knew where he lived and describing his home in detail.
The threats were reported and he was arrested.
Skliar admitted being at the assault scene but not attacking the man, and said the texts were sent “by accident”.
The victim’s impact statement, which was read aloud in court, detailed how the man’s life had changed irrevocably since the incident.
He said he thought he was going to die and for months suffered balance problems because of ear damage.
He said the fear and stress following the attack led to his wife leaving him, he was at risk of losing his home, and was fearful of going out in public.
Skliar’s defence lawyer said the “bizarre, unusual” case involved extremely out of character behaviour by his client.
He said he thought he had a happy marriage until he uncovered the online affair, which caused him to act irrationally and led to health complications through stress and anxiety.
He said Skliar “lacked judgment” in setting up the meet and then engaging in the assault, and regrets “taking matters into his own hands”.
Magistrate Costas Kilias said the incident was troubling.
“I accept there may have been heat of the moment passion in the initial event, which I don’t condone or accept as necessary,” Mr Kilias said.
“But when everything cooled down he then sent the greatly concerning texts to the victim.”
Skliar was ordered to appear in court in person on March 4 for further plea and sentencing.
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