Indefinite prison term for beatings, rape of cellmate
A prisoner who made his cellmate’s life a “living hell” by beating him daily, treating him like a slave and then raping him, has been sentenced to preventive detention.
Rene Francis Thomas strenuously denied the charges against him at trial last year, but was found guilty of strangling his cellmate and then raping him.
He was further found guilty of punching his cellmate daily, assaulting him with a radio cord twice, kneeing him in the head causing his head to split open and stabbing him under the eye with a plastic knife.
Yesterday at Thomas’ sentencing, Detective Mark Horne read out the victim impact statement saying the survivor still lives with the scars five years later.
He has nerve damage, PTSD and physical scars that are a constant reminder of Thomas a “vicious and violent individual”.
The survivor spoke of how he has recurring nightmares of what happened to him. “You are a monster,” he said. Prosecutor Ned Fletcher said Thomas has a serious pattern of offending and it had escalated over the years.
Fletcher urged the judge to sentence Thomas to preventive detention – an indeterminate prison sentence with the ability for Corrections to manage a defendant for the remainder of their lives.
Thomas’ lawyer, Peter Kaye, submitted his client should not be sentenced to preventive detention.
Fletcher accepted Thomas had trauma from his childhood which went to explain some of his offending. However, Thomas is likely to commit another offence and still doesn’t accept the offending and hasn’t engaged in rehabilitative treatment.
Justice Anderson said a finite sentence would not provide sufficient protection to the community and he had entrenched behaviours.
Justice Anderson called Thomas’ narrative of the assaults “chilling” and he came across as controlling and self-entitled.
A health assessor said Thomas scored well above average on a psychopathic checklist.
Over the period of 230 days the former prisoner was celled with Thomas he was treated like a slave, “his little bitch”.
Thomas and the survivor were both serving sentences at Serco-run Auckland South Correctional Facility in 2019.
The survivor, who was serving a sentence for sexual offending against girls, moved into Thomas’ cell and not long after, Thomas began controlling and beating him. Thomas controlled what and when he could do things even down to using the toilet and showering.
Sometime in November 2019, just before he asked to be moved cells, the victim was about to get undressed to have a shower when he was strangled by Thomas from behind in a headlock. The next thing he recalled was coming to with Thomas pulling his trousers up and his backside being sore with blood and semen trickling down his leg.
Nothing was said between the pair and Thomas instructed him to have a shower.
In those 230 days, the cellmate also lost 30kg as Thomas would eat his meals.
Other prisoners noticed the victim’s dramatic weight loss and bruises with one even going to the guards about it.
“I think most of them [the guards] turned a blind eye to it,” the cellmate said.
On October 2, 2019, the victim was interviewed by a wing supervisor after a report Thomas had been assaulting him during lock up. He denied anything was happening.
“Mr Thomas told me not to say anything otherwise I’d get another hiding when we got locked up,” he said.
Soon after he was raped, the survivor asked a guard if he could move.
He was moved into a different wing and eventually moved to another prison. It was while he was at the new prison after speaking with a mental health counsellor he decided to tell the police about Thomas.
The man now has constant headaches and is on medication.
After the guilty verdicts, Stuff asked Serco a number of questions as to why nothing was done earlier to prevent the ongoing assaults.
“We regret that a man in our care had these experiences. In this instance, when staff became aware of the allegations, both men were interviewed separately, and both denied there were any issues,” the Serco spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said safety and security of everyone at the facility is paramount.