Domestic violence Tasmania: Cowards of 2022 revealed
Pregnant women belted, girlfriends choked, harassment from prison: These are the Tasmanian men and women who have disgraced themselves and faced court in 2022. *Warning: Distressing content.
Police & Courts
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In Australia, 2.2 million people – mostly women, but some men – have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from a partner and 3.6m have experienced emotional abuse from a partner.
So says the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, citing census data.
Tasmania is not immune from the scourge – in fact, not a day goes by in our criminal justice system where abusers don’t face the courts to be held to account for their disgraceful actions.
The below are some such Tasmanians. If you happen to see these faces flash up on your dating app – swipe left.
DANE MERVYN BURNS, 32, NORWOOD
Burns was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended for an operational period of 18 months conditional on him completing a 12-month Community Correction Order in March this year.
He pleaded guilty to 15 offences, most seriously assaulting a woman at Lulworth on April 2, 2021.
Angry that the woman had taken too long to return from Bridport with grog, he pulled “several fistfuls of hair” from her scalp before striking her left eye, leaving her with “substantial bruising and swelling” to her face and “bald patches” on her head.
The court heard it was his first offence of violence against a woman but his second overall, with a previous sentence of 126 hours’ community service in 2016 for another common assault.
LONEWOLF BRENT SHANE MANSELL, 19, SOUTH LAUNCESTON
Mansell was sentenced in March to 14 months’ imprisonment, six of which were suspended for an operational period of two years conditional on Mansell completing a 12-month Community Correction Order.
He pleaded guilty to a staggering 103 offences, including three charges of common assault.
On March 30 last year at Invermay, CCTV captured Mansell assaulting a woman by pulling her hair, punching her in the face and placing her in a headlock, the court heard.
A month later, on April 21, Mansell assaulted the woman again by punching and kicking her.
After his remand in custody, Mansell, despite being warned phone calls from prison were recorded, subjected his victim to a vile campaign of abuse.
He variously called her a “stupid little mutt”, a “junkie slut”, a “filthy f****** dog”, a “dirty mutt”, and threatened to “gutter stomp your filthy face in”.
Mansell also assaulted a second woman by choking her and pushing her to the ground.
MICHELLE KYLIE HINDS, 30, PERTH
Hinds was sentenced in April in the Supreme Court to an 18-month Community Correction Order and 70 hours of community service.
She pleaded guilty to one count each of common assault, aggravated common assault, aggravated burglary and assaulting a pregnant woman.
The court heard Hinds repeatedly smashed her husband’s head into the window of their car on November 3, 2021, at Kings Meadows’ Meadow Mews Shopping Centre, after learning he had been unfaithful and impregnated a mutual friend.
She punched her husband several times in the face before grabbing his head with both hands and slamming it repeatedly into the car window.
Hinds then travelled to the woman’s West Launceston house and bashed her, including by punching the pregnant woman in her stomach.
MATHEW JAMES LOWE, 36, WEST LAUNCESTON
Lowe, a committed anti-vaxxer, was fined $800 in June for assaulting fiance on November 24, 2021, over a dispute as to their children’s vaccination status.
On the day in question, the pair began arguing about the children’s vaccination status, at which point Lowe’s fiance began secretly recording their conversation on her phone. Upon discovering this, the court heard, Lowe seized her phone and attempted to delete the recording, leading to a melee in which Lowe pushed the woman and grabbed at her hands when she attempted to retrieve it.
Lowe’s fiance suffered carpet burns to her knees and elbows, and bruising and scratches to her neck.
Lowe had two previous convictions for common assault.
TROY FRANCIS REYNOLDS, AGE AND SUBURB NOT RECORDED
Reynolds was jailed in November for two years and nine months, with a non-parole period of two years.
He was found guilty by a Hobart jury of four counts of assaulting his girlfriend, who was in a leg brace at the time, at a backpackers’ hostel in August, 2020.
He committed one of the assaults after his girlfriend had been talking to other people, grabbing her hair, pushing her towards their room and calling her a slut.
Reynolds then punched her to the face when she tried to leave, so hard that she collapsed to the ground.
When she woke at lunchtime the next day, Reynolds told her she’d made him angry, to justify what he’d done.
The woman made calls for her father to rescue her, but Reynolds kicked her in the back, pushed her onto the bunk beds and punched her in the head, the court heard.
HAYDEN DWAYNE COOK, AGE NOT RECORDED, HERDSMANS COVE
Cook was jailed in November for 18 months, with a non-parole period of one year, with the activation of a previously suspended sentence for other offending.
He pleaded guilty in Hobart Supreme Court to a count of assaulting his pregnant girlfriend at Herdsmans Cove in April.
The assault occurred after the woman asked Cook to move out.
Cook smashed the woman’s phone, then later attacked the woman in the kitchen with a green, one-metre-long fibreglass handle, hitting her eye.
He kicked a door, which struck her forehead, then threw a fuel canister at her.
Tasmania Police arrived, finding the woman injured and smelling strongly of accelerant.
Cook had a poor record of family violence offending, the court heard.
MARK ANTHONY WATKINS, 31, DEVONPORT
Watkins spent about five months in custody on 38 domestic violence charges, relating to a three-month spree of violence and control against his then-partner, repeatedly assaulting her, forcing her to hand over her phone to be checked, verbally abusing her and making her prove to him where she was.
His charges included deprivation of liberty, multiple counts of common assault, emotional abuse or intimidation, and dozens of counts of breaching a police family violence order.
He was sentenced in November.
The offences were committed between September 5 – November 29, 2021.
Watkins controlled his partner by demanding her phone and password for regular device checks, calling her and messaging her constantly throughout the day, and making her video chat to prove she was alone in their home.
He also denigrated her by calling her names.
Physically, he assaulted the woman in a number of ways, including by climbing on top of her and restraining her by the wrists, striking her to the nose, pulling her hair, squeezing her thighs, kicking her feet and pushing her.
ADYE JOHN WELLS, 36, SPREYTON
Wells was sentenced in the Supreme Court in September to 18 months’ imprisonment, backdated to January 5, 2021, on a charge of perverting justice.
Wells, who had no fewer than 130 convictions for family violence, serving multiple periods of actual incarceration previously, enlisted a co-accused to harass his ex-girlfriend between November 11, 2020 and April 17, 2021, to get her to drop charges against him.
In concert with his co-accused, Wells planned on fabricating evidence that messages sent by him to his victim were not in fact sent by him, by having his co-accused send texts from Wells’ phone to prove the device wasn’t in his control.
The court heard Wells, a father of two, also directed his co-accused to speak with the victim in an attempt to “dissuade” her from continuing with the complaints or, alternatively, to give evidence favourable to Wells.
Wells, hopelessly addicted to methamphetamine, also contacted his victim dozens of times by letter and by phone, alternatively directing “abusive comments” her way, emotionally intimidating her, expressing his love for her and offering her cash to drop the complaints.
He continued to contact her from prison.
KIRK RUSSELL MACKAY, 27, NEWNHAM
MacKay, jailed earlier this year for preying on young girls on social media application Snapchat, was sentenced in November to three months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended for three years, for assaulting his partner.
The court heard MacKay was drinking with his partner in the caravan they resided in at Rocherlea on the afternoon of February 25 this year when the defendant became “agitated” about his partner’s brother, whom he wanted to “fight”.
MacKay exited the caravan and began “throwing things around the yard” before he struck his partner to the mouth with his open hand, splitting her lip.
The assault was in breach of a suspended sentence, partially imposed for an earlier assault on his partner.
On that occasion, MacKay again struck his partner in the mouth with an open hand, while also punching her to the side of the face as he tried to retrieve her mobile phone.
He will be eligible for parole in April 2024.
PAUL PHILLIP GALEA, 31, RIVERSIDE
Galea was sentenced to community service, a Community Correction Order and 17 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for 18 months.
The court heard he committed 17 domestic violence offences against his wife after their separation, most seriously assaulting her by tripping her to the ground and destroying her property on two occasions, causing $8000 worth of damage during one of his sprees.
His offending was committed at Riverside and Westbury between May 21 last year and February 20 this year. He spent a total of seven days in pre-sentence custody across the offending.
The court heard that despite his guilty plea, he continued to deny the common assault to a court-appointed psychologist.
It led Magistrate Simon Brown to conclude Galea had limited insight into the seriousness of his abuse.
CURTIS REEVE, 30, BURNIE
Reeve, who had been remanded in pre-sentence custody, pleaded guilty in October to three counts of assaulting his girlfriend (the latter when she was his ex-girlfriend), as well as assaulting a man she was with.
On the first occasion, Reeve consumed approximately 20 beers before she picked him up from a drinking session at a mate’s house.
The court was told he pulled her hair and hit her in the head leaving bruises to the eye and jaw.
Later that month, after their split, he and a co-defendant, upon learning the woman was at another man’s house, travelled there, stormed inside, breaking a mirror, then dragged the woman by her jumper across the lawn and into a car.
Reeve’s co-defendant punched the other man four times in the head, the court heard, leaving him unconscious.
CHRISTIAN NEIL SHEARING, AGE NOT RECORDED, HOBART
Shearing was sentenced in the Supreme Court in November to 15 months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended for three years, after pleading guilty to three counts of assault.
An overheard phone conversation and cannabis escalated into a fight that left the woman choked, bruised and running into the street to get help.
The offences occurred in January this year at the Devonport home they formerly shared.
Justice Tamara Jago said while Shearing had disputed he had strangled his partner in the Devonport home they shared in January last year, she believed the victim’s evidence.
“Her injuries were consistent with her account,” Justice Jago said.
“I read her victim impact statement. She feared she might die. Her vision was affected and she struggled to breathe.
“It was an act directed at domination and control.”
JARRAH CHURCH-CLARK, 30, HUON VALLEY
Church-Clark pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court in October to a count of persistent family violence, committed between 2011–21.
Over a 10-year period, a court heard, Church-Clark harmed his partner in a variety of ways – stomping on her head, headbutting her, kicking a bottle of Jack Daniels in her face, swinging a steel bar at her and repeatedly choking her to the point of unconsciousness.
His vile spree kicked off after the couple had been at a Dover party when Church-Clark became jealous.
He locked her out of their home before pouring fuel over her and unsuccessfully trying to light it, before dousing a surfboard and threatening to burn the house down.
The court heard that on another occasion, Church-Clark held the woman’s head to the ground so she could not breathe.
He then started smashing holes in the house, grabbing a large fish tank – which contained fish – and smashed it on the ground.
In 2019, the woman asked for Church-Clark not to have drugs delivered to the house.
He stomped on her head and threw her against the wall.
The next day the woman asked a hairdresser she knew to cut her hair, as she had bald patches from the attack.
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Everybody appearing at Hobart Magistrates Court, Friday, October 11
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