Victim to get $ 10k payout
A MAN has avoided jail but will pay his former partner $ 10,000 in compensation after being convicted of a frightening and degrading attack.
Alexander Ross Pisano, 29, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm when he fronted Townsville District Court yesterday.
Pisano, the son of Canegrowers Herbert River chairman Michael Pisano, pushed his then girlfriend Storm Mienie around their house, sending her into a cupboard and a bed head in a prolonged attack on February 4, 2017.
Crown prosecutor Amanda Payne said Pisano was intoxicated and had been at a party when Ms Mienie went to pick him up.
The now 21- year- old got lost on her way to pick up Pisano and Ms Payne said he abused her on the drive home, calling her “stupid” and a “complete idiot”.
He assaulted her intermittently from their arrival home about 11.50pm to 12.30am the following day.
“He pushed her multiple times around the house,” Ms Payne said.
“He pushed her face- first into a cupboard, her head- on to the corner of a bed. He further belittled and degraded the complainant telling her ‘ you’re better off dead, no one will miss you and have to deal with your s---’.”
The court heard Pisano had a history of drug offending involving methamphetamine and cannabis but had no violent offences on his criminal record. However, Ms Payne said a domestic violence protection order was issued on Pisano with Ms Mienie as the aggrieved, only two months before the attack.
Defence barrister Justin Greggery said Pisano accepted the incident would have been “traumatic” for the victim. Mr Greggery said his client came from a respected family in the Ingham area and the offending had tarnished not only his own reputation, but his family’s as a whole.
District Court Chief Judge Kerry O’Brien took into account Pisano’s references and his willingness to pay $ 10,000 compensation when determining a punishment.
In addition to the compensation payment, Pisano was placed on an 18- month probation order in which he will have to undergo counselling.
Ms Mienie said later the $ 10,000 reparation did not come close to the wages she had lost from not being able to work, let alone the ongoing trauma, depression and anxiety she experienced as a result of the attack.
“That doesn’t cover the debt collectors, the bills I owed, people looking at me weird, it doesn’t cover all of that,” she said.
“He walked out of court and he smirked at me; he still smiled and smirked as he walked past with his family, and I thought ‘ how could you,’ ‘ how dare you’.”