Publish date: 2024-01-02

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Wife sentenced to minimum of 11 years in jail for role in couple’s physical and psychological abuse of their daughter throughout her childhood
Warning: this report contains distressing details

A “sadistic” father who raped, mutilated and tortured his young daughter over a 14-year period has been sentenced in a Sydney court to at least 36 years in jail.

The man, now 59, began abusing his youngest daughter in 1997, when she was five years old.

Much of the abuse was carried out in a dilapidated shed on the family property in rural New South Wales, where she would be held for up to three days, her wrists bound by rope.

Her father, an elite athlete who had once qualified for the Olympics, served as her sporting coach and would threaten her with the “shed” if she did not perform well in competitions.

On one occasion, he locked her overnight in a box used to store sports gear. The next morning he took her to the shed, sexually assaulted her with a tool, then struck her on the head with the same tool while her wrists were bound.

The court heard that he threatened to kill his “completely helpless, powerless, terrified daughter” with a machete should she tell anyone of the abuse.

This continued until 2011 when the young women, aged 19, made a full statement to police.

Her mother later told her to drop the complaints against her father, when there was an apprehended violence order against him, telling her it was “family business only”.

The man was taken into custody in October 2013. He was convicted of 73 charges by a jury in a harrowing 12-week trial earlier this year.

Judge Sarah Huggett sentenced him to a total prison term of 48 years at Sydney’s district court on Friday, with a minimum non-parole period of 36 years – a sentence she acknowledged may exceed the remainder of his natural life.

She had earlier told the court that she had had to put aside her “natural feelings as a human to the profoundly disturbing way the victim was treated”.

As Justie Huggett began to read the combined 89 counts aloud, the man sat in the dock, looking at his feet and holding his head in his hands.

His wife, now 51, was convicted of a further 13 counts, including indecent assault. Two involved another daughter.

She was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of 11 years.

The court heard how, three years after the abuse began, she had told her eight-year-old daughter “to make noises for her father” during the rapes to “make [it] better” for both of them.

On a separate occasion, while she was putting her daughter to bed, the little girl had asked her if she was “doing it properly”.

“This question reinforced the mother’s understanding as to her daughter’s vulnerability,” said Justice Huggett.

The child had then told her mother she did not like her father having sexual intercourse with her. The court was told “her mother completely ignored her” and touched her daughter’s clitoris and penetrated her digitally “to demonstrate how sex could feel good”.

The mother had also demonstrated the act of masturbation on herself in front of her three daughters, then aged eight, 11 and 12, in the knowledge that her husband was sexually assaulting the youngest.

On another occasion, she had explained to her daughter methods of making a penis erect.

Huggett said the woman had breached her daughter’s trust “in the gravest way.

“The victim was entitled to expect that her mother would protect her yet her mother showed complete disregard for her worth and her value as a person.”

The most serious of the 13 counts the mother was convicted of pertained to joint offending by the two parents, when the father had instructed his daughter, then 12, to perform sex acts on her mother.

The court heard that the girl complied while her mother was laughing.

When the girl vomited over the side of the bed, her father told her she was “disgusting” and instructed her to eat her own vomit.

Huggett said “her father’s disgusting conduct ... and her mother’s complete acquiescence” meant the offences were “in the worst category for an offence of their type”.

She noted character references suggested both parents were “intelligent and educated” and held in high regard in their community, with the man described as “firm and fair” and “down-to-earth” coach. For a period he had been employed as a senior lecturer at a university.

“I find it wholly unsurprising that numerous people describe him as they have ... people were hoodwinked as to his true nature.”

But despite opportunity “to reflect on the enormous impact and immeasurable harm they were causing”, Justice Huggett said both parents continued to insist on their innocence.

His wife had told a doctor that she was “100% innocent” and had been “sentenced for something that I have not done”. She had said the same of her husband.

Huggett said there was no evidence to suggest “even a modicum of remorse or insight” on his part, nor of a mental health disorder or impaired judgement that might explain the abuse.

“Simply put, he did what he did for his own completely selfish, depraved and sadistic reasons.”

Though there was nothing to indicate that treatment would enhance his prospects of rehabilitation, the father had said he would be prepared to undertake it, stating that “obviously [his] behaviour” had affected his daughter “in some way or another”.

The young woman, now 21, watched the sentencing hearing via videolink on Thursday and Friday.

“I will be forever damaged by the torture and inhumane treatment I suffered,” she had written in her victim impact statement. “... [I hope] one day I can have a moment in my life where I do not suffer from the horrific memories of the abuse”.

Huggett told the court that, “as dignified and measured” as she was in her statement, the abuse by her parents had affected every part of her life.

A doctor had described it as “catastrophically devastating”, and diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder.

The young woman had made multiple suicide attempts and had been admitted more than 20 times to psychiatric units in order to prevent her death. She continued to suffer flashbacks and dissociative episodes that resulted in her reliving the trauma.

As her father had told her she would never “have the guts” to commit suicide, sometimes in dissociative states, she was “very determined to prove she has the strength”.

Huggett said it was an “impossible task” for a sentence to reflect the harm done to the victim.

“She will suffer the consequences of his despicable and abhorrent conduct of the rest of her life.”

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