Court rejects appeal

A CAIRNS man who brutally tortured his girlfriend in a jealous rage has had an appeal to reduce his sentence rejected.

Mitchel Wayne Ellis was jailed for 6½ years and declared a serious violent offender on charges of torture, malicious act with intent and assault occasioning bodily harm.

He must serve at least 80 per cent before he is eligible for parole.

The day after she broke up with him he subjected her to a four hour assault in September 2016 at her Manoora home.

They had been together two months but she ended it after he became aggressive and accused her of cheating on him.

Ellis left her physically and emotionally scarred after he branded the then-34-year-old woman with a garden trowel and butter knife he heated up on the kitchen stove.

He rubbed chilli into her wounds.

Ellis also slapped, punched and bit her, forced her into a cupboard, kicked and burned her with hot water, all while she begged him to stop.

She managed to escape when neighbours called police.

Ellis argued that the sentence was too harsh, parole eligibility should have been after two to three years and a serious violence offence declaration shouldn’t have been made.

“Although the offending concerned a single episode, it involved the protracted perpetration of violence of a callous and brutal nature calculated to inflict physical and mental torture,” Court of Appeal Justice Anthe Philippides said in a recent judgment.

“The violence was inflicted in the complainant’s house where she was entitled to be safe and protected and in the context of (Ellis’s) irrational jealousy ….”

The appeal was rejected.

ALTHOUGH THE OFFENDING CONCERNED A SINGLE EPISODE, IT INVOLVED THE PROTRACTED PERPETRATION OF VIOLENCE OF A CALLOUS AND BRUTAL NATURE CALCULATED TO INFLICT PHYSICAL AND MENTAL TORTURE