Release for Cairns rapist

Offender was jailed after terrifying attack in public toilet

A NORTH Queensland rapist who a judge claimed was “one impulse away” from reoffending has been released into the Townsville community.

Troy Jimmy Charles Brown, 40, has twice been convicted of rape, including a terrifying incident in Cairns in 2002 where he attacked someone in a public toilet.

He was jailed for seven years for that offence.

Despite his past, Brown has been released under a 10-year supervision order to live in Townsville after psychologists claimed that he had “turned a corner”.

Brown’s criminal history began in 1994 and escalated when he forced open a public toilet cubicle to assault and rape a woman in Cairns eight years later.

A judge ordered in 2009 he remain in custody for an “indefinite term, for care, control or treatment” and was too great a risk to the community. He was eventually released in 2014, but has been in and out of jail for the past seven years for repeatedly breaching his strict supervision order.

The breaches involved Brown using drugs or refusing to give urine samples.

On his latest breach in October last year, Justice Martin Burns said Brown showed no insight about the connection between drug use and his elevation in sexual offending. “The respondent is one impulse away from acting on his sexual preoccupations, and in a serious way,” he said.

Brown has undergone multiple psychiatric exams, including two recent consultations that stated the 40-year-old had “psychopathic features”, “mixed personality disorder” and was on the borderline of “mental retardation”.

Dr Andrew Aboud considered Brown would be a high risk of reoffending if released without a supervision order.

Another psychiatrist, Dr Josie Sudin said she thought Brown had changed, and was no longer resentful of his supervision orders.

“He appeared to have turned the corner,” she said in a report tendered to the court.

Dr Sudin noted Brown “accepts the link between cannabis and his increased risk of offending” and is taking responsibility for his actions and asserts he will not use cannabis if released in the community.

Corrective Services proposed Brown live in Townsville, as there was a vacancy at the city’s specialised housing and Brown had access to the Sexual Offenders Maintenance Program. Justice Susan Brown said there were signs Brown was more willing to take “positive steps to change”, and was satisfied to release him from jail under a 10-year supervision order.