‘He comes and finds me … and then he hurts me’

Gary Andy is an ‘ugly man’, a ‘bad man’ who beat Patricia savagely using ‘animal-like’ violence. He punched her. He bit her. He hit her with a burning stick.

Alice Springs Law Courts. Picture: AAP

Gary Andy is an “ugly man”, a “bad man” who beat Patricia savagely using “animal-like” violence. He punched her. He bit her. He hit her with a burning stick.

He targeted her “good eye” in a vindictive attack after an assault that injured the other eye failed to give him the control over her he so desperately wanted.

He attacked her with a food grater while she was holding their baby, wounding her so severely that the infant was drenched in its mother’s blood and left barely able to see.

Patricia, not her real name, tried to escape Andy. She rejected him. She left him. She took refuge with relatives and in a safe house. She reported his behaviour and pleaded for help. His relatives ignored her, as did others nearby.

“I’m scared of Gary. He hurt me a lot of times. I try to stay away from him, but he comes and finds me, and then he hurts me,” she said in a victim impact statement.

“He’s a bad man. He’s an ugly man. I don’t like him.

“Territory Families took my son away after Gary hit me … I just want to get my son back … I don’t want him (Gary) around me anymore.”

Andy pursued her relentlessly, hunting her in the hospital maternity ward, at the casino, jumping out and assaulting her when she was walking down the street.

Eventually, after he rang her from prison 158 times over 12 weeks – threatening and cajoling her even though he had just completed a behavioural change course – he successfully intimidated her, and she changed her story.

She told authorities she could not remember much and that Andy had been in jail for a long time, and she wanted him home to help look after their son.

His Local Court trial collapsed. But in this instance, it was not the end of the story.

Andy eventually pleaded guilty to and was convicted of five counts of aggravated assault against Patricia, six counts of breaching a domestic violence order and one of attempting to pervert the course of justice. A suspended sentence was also reinstated. At the time of those proceedings in March 2020, the then 37-year-old already had an 18-page rap sheet including nine prior convictions for violent offending – five of them aggravated assaults against Patricia, two against a former female partner and two against the police.

NT Supreme Court judge Judith Kelly identified Andy’s case as an example of the Territory’s domestic violence problems. “You told your lawyer you feel sorry for your wife for hurting her and that you want to learn from your mistakes and change your life. I do not believe you,” she said when sentencing him. “You have viciously bashed this unfortunate woman many, many times and tried to avoid being punished for it. The only person you feel sorry for is yourself.”

She told Andy he had “learned nothing” from prior stints in jail for bashing Patricia, and “the only time this victim is likely to be safe from you is while you are locked up”.

Sentencing laws obliged her to impose a term of seven and a half years with a non-parole period of three years and nine months backdated to July 2018.

The NT’s Attorney-General and Justice Department did not answer questions as whether or not Andy remained inside.