There was food and drink, friends and their children, and at some point Fardon slipped away from the festivities to rape a young girl.

She was 12, and he forced her into a room as she stared down the barrel of the rifle in his hands.

At some point, she pleaded with him to let her go to the toilet. He did, but forced her back into the room where he “brutally” raped her until she was severely injured.

The adults at the party were too scared to intervene. But not so the girl’s 15-year-old sister.

She went to her little sister’s rescue. Fardon wanted sex from her too. She refused and he bashed her with the butt of his rifle, splitting open her head.

They’d send him to jail, releasing him again in September 1988. Twenty days later he’d rape again.

He claimed he’d come to an arrangement with the woman — sex in exchange for drugs he’d had in his possession. But when she took the drugs, he chased her down and beat her. He hit her in the back, kicked her and smashed her head into telephone poles as he dragged her back to his flat.

This is the monster the Queensland Government would see rot in jail. The man they changed laws for. The man they said could never be fixed.

But come October, he will be free. For the first time in decades, Robert John Fardon, Queensland’s most notorious rapist, will have no supervision and will live out his days in a community that could be yours.

The story of Robert Fardon’s life, as told by Fardon to treating psychiatrists, is a sad one — if true.

But court documents that relate to Fardon’s long legal battle take pains to point out that many of his claims involve people now dead and can’t be verified.

Born in Murwillumbah, Fardon’s parents split when he was young. So young that he has no memory of his mother. He was raised by his father, a violent alcoholic who was often absent with work — or jail.

An “unwanted” Fardon would be passed between relatives and neighbours who lived on farms and expected him to work for his keep.

If he misbehaved, it would be reported back to his father who would “beat him senseless”.

“(Fardon) reported that his father said he would consider him a man when he could beat him at fighting and then he would be able to leave home,” court documents reveal.

Fardon told his psychiatrists he was given a puppy by a neighbour but the puppy was used as an instrument of punishment.

“If he did wrong, the puppy was beaten or kicked,” court documents said.

“On an occasion when his father returned home, the dog apparently annoyed him (and) the father said it was broken in spirit, took a gun and shot it in front of (Fardon) who was then about 10 years old.”

He made claims to his psychiatrists that he was sexually abused as a child, naming various relatives, young and old.

At age 12 he was expelled from school for punching a teacher he felt had wronged him. He didn’t attempt to continue his education. He got by working on the farm or taking labouring jobs. But things got worse after another fight with his father.

He was 14 then, and big enough to beat his father in a fist fight. His father called him a man and told him he was on his own.

In 1967, when Fardon was 18, he pleaded guilty to the attempted carnal knowledge of a girl under the age of 10. A sympathetic judge put him on a $100 three-year good behaviour bond.

In later years, he’d tell his treating psychiatrists that he simply woke up to find the girl in his bed.

“This is consistent with the many reports about him which tend to show that he seeks to minimise his wrongdoing or fails to accept responsibility for wrongful actions,” court documents state.

Fardon would spend nearly all of his adult life in prison. When released, he would often reoffend, or suffer anxiety attacks at the stress of life outside the routines of jail.

In 2003, having spent nearly all of the past 23 years in prison, Fardon became eligible for release. Then-Premier Peter Beattie had other ideas. And so the Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act was introduced, giving authorities the ability to keep people like Fardon in prison indefinitely.

He was the first prisoner subjected to it. But there are now more than 100 dangerous sex offenders who have been kept in prison or subjected to continued supervision under the Act.

Fardon has now spent 15 years fighting for his freedom. In October he’ll get it.

The past few years have seen him gradually mix back into society under strict supervision. He is now aged 69 and suffers from emphysema. He has caught trains alone, attended appointments alone. His psychiatrists believe he no longer shows psychopathic traits, and despite his history, they do not believe he is a paedophile.

They say he is a low risk of reoffending.

Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath, whose electoral office is in the same suburb where Fardon raped a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint, argued otherwise.

“(The offences Fardon) could commit, if he reoffends, would be horrendous, if they involved a repetition of his earlier offending,” her submissions stated.

Time will tell who was right.