Sex offenders’ register time cut for boy who tried to rape and murder schoolmate

GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING: A 17-year-old boy who repeatedly and brutally stabbed a teenage girl after attempting to rape her has had his time on the sex offenders’ register cut.

A TEENAGE boy who broke into a schoolmate’s house, attempting to rape and murder her in an horrific attack that required life-saving surgery, has had his time on the sex offenders’ register reduced.

According to a recently-published Tasmanian Court of Criminal Appeal judgment, the boy was 17 in 2013 when he showed up at the girl’s house uninvited.

He armed himself with a pair of scissors he found at the rear of the property and entered the home without permission, entering the girl’s bedroom, jumping on her bed and holding the scissors to her throat, the judgment said.

The girl was also 17 and home alone during the violent attack.

The boy started to strangle her, trying to remove her clothes and saying “do it or I’ll kill you” and words to the effect of “’I tried so hard to get you so many times but you rejected me”, according to the judgment.

He was found by the courts to have stabbed her to the upper chest, ribs, stomach, back and neck with a kitchen knife, shattered a glass frying pan lid over her head, then tried to shove a different knife down her throat, cutting her tongue.

During the attack, the boy was held to have said words to the effect of: “I need help. There is someone else inside me. Call the police.”

He was also found to have retrieved a wrench with the intention of beating the girl with it, but she put a chair in front of her for protection, so he threw it at her head and arm instead.

The attack only ended when the girl’s mother arrived home.

The girl was taken to hospital by ambulance with life-threatening injuries, undergoing emergency surgery.

Her mother was left to clean up the blood in the kitchen.

The boy was detained for four-and-a-half years, with a non-parole period of half that time, and ordered to remain on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.

However, he recently appealed the reporting aspect of his sentence, arguing the length of 10 years was not allowed under legislation as he was underage at the time.

The boy, who was released on parole during 2016, successfully argued to reduce his time on the register to the maximum for a youth, of seven years and six months.

He will now remain on the register until January 2023.

Follow @ambervwilson