Rape appeal dismissed Drink was downfall of sex- abuse former carer

A BURDEKIN man found guilty of raping his former partner – a disability pensioner with cancer – has had his appeal against the verdict dismissed.

Court of Appeal Judge James Henry said the man had been a “supportive” carer of the disabled woman when sober but he became violent when he drank.

In October last year, the man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was found guilty in Townsville District Court of assault causing bodily harm and two counts of rape.

He lodged an appeal, arguing the jury’s guilty verdict was a miscarriage of justice.

Judge Henry dismissed the appeal in a judgment published on Friday. He wrote that the victim was a disability pensioner with cancer and mobility problems and had been living with the man.

On February 4 last year, the man had been drinking wine when he called his estranged partner into the bedroom.

“The appellant told the complainant to get undressed and lie down on top of the bed. She did so because she was scared,” Judge Henry wrote.

“There then began a course of repeated threats, violence and forced oral sex, which the complainant estimated lasted from about 8pm to 2am.”

The woman had told the court the man said her “time was up” and she was in the road of him and her friend, who he had been having sex with.

“He started slapping me on my left- hand side of my face … real hard … and then he started punching me a bit with his fist … in my left- hand side … near my eye,” she said.

Judge Henry wrote that near the end of the ordeal the man went to hit the woman again but she grabbed his hand, saying “You’re a better person than this ... You know you’re a better person”. “On her account he desisted, telling the complainant her time was up and that he had had enough of her and her daughter. He then fell asleep,” he wrote.

Judge Henry wrote that when the woman woke she noticed that she had a black eye, and the man told her to tell people she had fallen on her face.

The next day the woman’s daughter phoned and she told her the man had “done inap- propriate things to her”. The daughter phoned police.

Photos of the woman’s black eye and neck bruising were shown to the jury.

The man appealed the guilty verdict on three grounds, including that the verdicts were “unreasonable and cannot be supported with regard to the evidence”. Judge Henry disagreed. “On the whole of the evidence it was comfortably open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt the appellant was guilty of the three charges,” he wrote.