Father free to unleash four month reign of terror
Within a week of being released on parole, Dean Wilson was viciously beating and raping his teenage daughter in a similar way to that in which he had attacked his previous victim.
Within a week of being released on parole, Dean Wilson was viciously beating and raping his teenage daughter in a way similar to how he had attacked his previous victim.
In September 2017, Wilson was released on parole after serving only 8½ years of his 11½-year sentence for raping a 23-year-old woman at an isolated location outside of Alice Springs.
Within a week of the Yuendumu man’s release from jail over that attack he was subjecting his 17-year-old daughter to repeated, protracted and savage physical and sexual assaults.
As revealed in today’s Weekend Australian, Wilson’s offending against his daughter has left her traumatised, depressed and exiled from the remote outback community of Yuendumu where she grew up.
Despite presumably being subjected to strict parole conditions, Wilson was free to terrorise his daughter for four months before being arrested after a particularly brutal beating and attempted rape at an isolated location outside of Alice Springs in January 2018.
Chillingly, the Warlpiri man had bashed and raped his first victim in a similar way and in a similarly isolated location outside Alice Springs eight years earlier.
Northern Territory Supreme Court documents reveal the horror that Wilson inflicted on his previous victim, who he had only met the night before, after promising to drop her at her father’s house just after daybreak on February 14, 2009.
While Wilson and the young woman had been socialising in the same group the night before, the pair had not spoken to each other before the terrifying attack.
After a night of drinking, Wilson was dropping members of the larger group off at several locations around Alice Springs including Warlpiri Camp when the woman became the sole remaining passenger in the rear seat of his station wagon.
The victim asked Wilson to drop her off at her father’s house in the Gillen area.
Wilson, then 26, began driving in that direction before turning off the Stuart Highway towards the Old Timers Village and up the old Ilparpa Road to a disused quarry area.
When Wilson stopped the vehicle, the woman jumped out and tried to run away but he grabbed her, pushed her on to the ground and kicked her in the face.
When she again tried to escape, he grabbed her by the hair and forced her into the back seat of the station wagon where he raped her.
Wilson repeatedly punched his struggling victim in the head and face, as she screamed desperately at him to stop, splitting her lip open.
After the violent sexual assault, Wilson ordered the woman to put her clothes back on and he got out of the car.
While her attacker was walking around the back of the car, the woman climbed into the front and tried to start the engine – but she wasn’t fast enough.
Wilson stopped her before forcing her to sit on his lap while he drove them back to Hoppys Camp.
When they arrived at the town camp shortly after 7.30am, a police patrol fortuitously happened to be there, attending to other matters.
The bloodied woman leapt out of the car, over a low boundary fence and ran towards the police officers, screaming that Wilson had just raped her.
Wilson fled in his car with police in pursuit.
He abandoned the vehicle and was arrested while trying to flee on foot.
During the arrest he punched Constable Mark Turner with a clenched fist, fracturing the officer’s jaw bone. Constable Turner had to be evacuated to the Royal Darwin Hospital where he underwent urgent surgery under general anaesthetic before spending months recovering.
Wilson admitted assaulting the police officer but denied raping the woman and pleaded not guilty at his trial in 2010.
Supreme Court judge Leslie Olsson said during sentencing that Wilson “savagely attacked (his victim), striking her a significant number of blows to the face and head with your fists”.
“It is stating the obvious to say you are a tall, substantially built man, whilst the victim was quite a small, slightly built woman who would manifestly have had no chance of defending herself against your assaults,” he said.
“She was quite clearly subjected to a sustained and very frightening experience.”
Justice Olsson said Wilson’s offending was “both sustained and extremely serious”.
“The sexual assault on the victim involved deliberately taking her to a relatively remote location where she was clearly unable to seek assistance and was thus extremely vulnerable.
“And in any event, she had no realistic ability to physically defend herself against a man of your stature. Moreover, the sexual penetration was, on any view, accompanied by or associated with the quite vicious series of physical assaults on the victim.”
The Acting Justice said that Wilson had not only denied the sexual offending, but also shown no remorse for his actions.
“Indeed, it is significant that not a word of contrition has been expressed in relation to your offending against the victim,” he said.
“It is the clear duty of the court by means of any sentence imposed to afford such protection as it can to young women from attacks of this type on them.
“The information before the court, including service of a previous substantial period of imprisonment, from which you do not appear to have learnt, and the apparent lack of any contrition does not fill me with present confidence as to your early rehabilitation and there is no positive indication that this is likely, despite your relatively young age.”
At the time of the 2009 rape, Wilson already had an extensive criminal history.
His 29 prior offences included convictions for assault, threatening with a firearm, resisting police in the execution of duty, breach of bail, and three convictions for breach of suspended sentence.
He had also been jailed for unlawfully causing grievous harm.
The woman’s Victim Impact Statement revealed that she has “experienced significant ongoing emotional problems” as a consequence of Wilson’s actions.
The jury found Wilson guilty of sexual intercourse without consent – which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment – and deprivation of liberty.
Wilson was also convicted of aggravated assault on a police officer.
In May 2010, Acting Justice Olsson, who has since retired, sentenced Wilson to an aggregate total of 11 years and six months imprisonment, for the three offences, backdated to begin from the day of his arrest.
He also fixed a non-parole period of seven years and seven months.
Wilson was released on parole after serving eight years and seven months in prison.
Parole is a form of strict conditional release into the community under the supervision of a probation and parole officer.
Northern Territory Parole Board chair Rex Wild told The Weekend Australian that, in accordance with the Information Act, the Parole Board does not reply to questions relating to individual prisoners and parolees.
As a result, the Parole Board did not respond to questions about Wilson’s parole conditions or monitoring between his release from prison in September 2017 and his arrest in January 2018.
MONDAY: CHAPTER TWO — The price of justice? Bloody payback
