By Perry Duffin
A “sexual sadist” has been earmarked for release from a Sydney mental health facility even after he attacked a woman in front of her children weeks after his last discharge from care and was recently discovered watching gory footage and making concerning remarks about rape.
The unprecedented case prompted the government to intervene and tell the courts the forensic mental health system lacks the capacity to safely monitor the most dangerous criminal patients.
A serial rapist from Long Bay forensic hospital has been earmarked for release again.Credit: Michael Howard
Over the past year, the Mental Health Review Tribunal has been preparing to release the man held in their high-risk facility, the forensic hospital attached to Long Bay Prison at Malabar, by granting him unsupervised overnight leave.
The tribunal’s privacy laws prevent the Herald from reporting the man’s name or where he will live. Both the tribunal and NSW Health have refused to confirm any schedule of release or whether it has already happened.
His anticipated return to the community coincides with the NSW government changing rules for forensic patients on social media and day leave.
The government and opposition stopped short of supporting a third proposal, put up by Orange independent MP Phil Donato, to electrically monitor the most dangerous released by the forensic system.
The forensic patient at Long Bay highlights the extraordinary lengths required to safely monitor a violent sex offender on the streets and the incapacity of the state’s mental health system to do so.
Just before Christmas, the NSW Supreme Court laid out a decision to put an ankle monitor on the man, who has a shocking history of violence even while under care and supervision of the state.
To do so, the State of NSW had to ask the court to invoke a separate high-risk offender law, called an extended supervision order, because the health system did not have the “infrastructure” to watch him and his care would fall to community mental health workers.
The man abducted and sexually attacked two women at knife point in Sydney in the late 1980s. He was released less than a decade later and began a string of armed robberies and other crimes.
He became a forensic patient in the early 2000s and escaped the hospital at Long Bay. Two years later, in 2008, the tribunal approved the serial rapist for conditional release.
The next month the man broke into a child’s bedroom, forced them to take him to their mother, then bound and sexually attacked the woman in her bed.
He was imprisoned until late 2021, when he was transferred to Long Bay’s forensic hospital.
While a patient, the man targeted and harassed female staff. But his treatment team applied for escorted day leave and unescorted overnight leave in 2023.
It was during an overnight leave session, in May 2024, the rapist watched “several hours of combat footage”, court documents say.
Later he made remarks about rape pornography and circumventing the rules. Despite that, his supervisors said the leave “went well”.
The State of NSW last year told the courts the man posed “an unacceptable risk” if released and needed to be subjected to an ESO so Corrective Services could use its resources to monitor him.
“Nothing in the expert evidence suggests that the conditions that may be imposed by the Tribunal ... would be sufficient to address the unacceptable risk otherwise associated with the defendant’s liberty,” Justice Dina Yehia SC summarised the state’s case in December.
“You need a very rigorous approach to managing (the man’s) conditions ... If that could be done in mental health services, great – I don’t have much confidence that it can,” court-appointed psychiatric expert Rajan Darjee said.
The forensic hospital’s then clinical director, Christina Matthews, told the court the Mental Health Act’s powers were “not fit for purpose” when it came to the serial offender.
“(He has) quite considerable sexual offending risks … the involvement of Corrective Services NSW may allow for some of those risks to be looked at in a more comprehensive manner,” she told the court.
Donato told parliament the pendulum had swung too far from the rights of victims to feel safe.
“It seemed as though the system had been designed to favour those who commit crimes, rather than supporting living victims and protecting the community,” he said last month.
Donato had argued for the electronic monitoring changes after one killer was granted escorted leave from Bloomfield Hospital and was discovered using dating apps.
He had killed his girlfriend just three years earlier.
“There was shock and disbelief that somebody who committed such a crime, in three years, was out using social media to talk with unsuspecting potential victims,” Donato told the Herald.
“It was a complete failure of a system.”
Advocacy Australia chair Clare Collins said MPs who voted against the electronic monitors “fail to realise that when forensic patients who commit such heinous acts are granted leave ... it’s done in secret, and killers can unknowingly abscond in any electorate, posing risks to any NSW community”.
Under the government changes introduced this month, the tribunal can ban patients from using social media on leave.
Judicial officers, such as magistrates and judges, will be required to sign off on unescorted leave in another change to the laws. They have always been required to sign off on final release.
“(The change) is intended to strengthen the power to make those relevant orders and boost community confidence that the appropriate protections are in place,” Minister for Mental Health Rose Jackson told parliament.
In a separate announcement, NSW Premier Chris Minns said this week he would abolish privately run electronic ankle monitoring for alleged criminals released by the courts on bail following the Herald’s investigation into failures in the bail rehabilitation system.
NSW Health said the Mental Health Review Tribunal made its orders based on expert evidence.
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