Jera Aurora, Karishma Lloyd bashed cleaner at Glenorchy Central

A Tasmanian duo repeatedly kicked and stomped on a Glenorchy Central cleaner in front of horrified shoppers, leaving his face caved in and requiring surgery. The man was completely innocent.

Dodges Ferry man Jera Aurora, 28. Picture: Facebook

A Hobart woman formed a bizarre and mistaken view a Glenorchy Central Shopping Centre cleaner was a child rapist, so she roped in a co-defendant to help savagely bash the worker, the pair repeatedly kicking and stomping the victim in front of horrified shoppers.

Dodges Ferry pair Karishma Gaye Lloyd and Jera Aurora, both 28, were sentenced in Hobart Supreme Court on Tuesday, having earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of Criminal Code assault.

The court heard the offence occurred on June 27 this year and was preceded by Lloyd concluding the entirely innocent man had abused a young child in the shopping centre’s bathroom.

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“You were wrong – he had nothing to do with it,” Justice Michael Brett told the court.

“Taking the law into their own hands,” the pair travelled to the centre and confronted the cleaner with the allegations.

When Aurora and Lloyd “did not receive an admission” – Lloyd subsequently told a psychologist she could just “sense (from his) fearful reaction he knew he’d done something wrong” – they proceeded to “brutally assault” the cleaner.

Lloyd pushed him over before the pair began repeatedly punching, kicking and stomping him on the ground.

At one point the cleaner attempted to scramble away into a nearby shop, but Lloyd “dragged him by the legs from the shop back into the general area”.

Dodges Ferry woman Karishma Gaye Lloyd, 28. Picture: Facebook

Both offenders were wearing heavy boots and the cleaner was left with a fractured eye socket, broken nose and significant bruising to his neck and back. He required surgery and suffers ongoing physical and mental struggles, including blurred vision.

Lloyd compounded her brutality by taking to social media in the wake of the bashing, telling her followers her victim was a child rapist who deserved the beating.

Justice Brett called the assault “brutal, dangerous and protracted, perpetrated on an innocent man in his workplace”.

“You should both be very ashamed of what you did.

“It was arrogant and wrong of you to think you had some moral entitlement to do this.”

Justice Brett ultimately accepted the defence case that the assault was spontaneous, that the pair only intended to verbally confront the man before Lloyd lost her cool.

He ultimately spared the pair actual imprisonment on the basis of their early pleas of guilty and the absence of relevant criminal history.

Both were sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended for 36 months on the basis they perform 240 hours – the maximum – of community service and submit to supervision by a probation officer for 12 months.