What serial rapist said to victim after attack
Written by admin on November 28, 2024
A serial rapist who told his victim, “Sorry for raping you. I’ve ruined your life, haven’t I?” has had his bid for a sentence reduction rejected by a court.
Joel Anthony Russo, 30, was handed a two decade-long jail term in June last year for an attack the judge described as “every woman’s worst nightmare”.
He had only been freed from jail four months earlier when he attacked a woman along the Merri Creek Trail in Melbourne’s north in December 2019.
About 7.30pm he grabbed the university student and dragged her 4m down to the riverbank, forcing her head underwater.
“I’ll let you live if you let me f–k you,” he told the woman.
She was subjected to a horrific 2.5 hour ordeal after which Russo apologised and asked if she would visit him in jail.
The woman escaped when the pair left the creek and she raised the alarm at a McDonald’s.
Russo was arrested hours later attempting to rob a nearby service station.
She would later tell a court: “There is no limit to the anger I feel knowing that the most life-threatening risk I took was to go for a walk alone and to ‘be a woman’.”
Sentencing Russo to 20 years and four months with a minimum of 17 years, County Court Judge Liz Gaynor described the attack as “predatory, persistent, highly violent, terrifying and prolonged”.
Judge Gaynor said Russo, who had an intellectual disability, was previously jailed in 2015 for a similar rape and blasted the “dreadful oversight” of authorities who released him.
“It is clear in my view that you fell through gaping cracks in the corrections system,” she said.
“It is clear you are an extremely dangerous offender.”
Russo appealed the sentence in the Court of Appeal on Tuesday, arguing it was “manifestly excessive”.
His barrister Paul Smallwood further argued Judge Gaynor had placed too much emphasis on community protection and failed to properly take into account Russo’s personal circumstances.
Russo, the court was told, had suffered severe abuse during his early years with his parents and in state guardianship and now lived with complex cognitive and emotional disabilities.
But on Thursday, justices Phillip Priest and Terry Forrest dismissed the appeal, finding the sentence was “well within the range” open to Judge Gaynor.
“Few, if any, cases of violent sexual offending within the experience of the members of this court have been as grave as the applicant’s,” they wrote.
“The applicant presents a danger to women, and, so the evidence suggests, will continue to be dangerous long into the future. Women in the community must be protected from him.”
