By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Women ‘prisoners’…
Their home is a prison – bars on windows and CCTV cameras guard the perimeter.
Yet it is the Noble Park woman and her mother that are the victims, waiting terrified of a violent ice-addicted ex-partner to be released back into the community.
The 20-year-old ‘Marilyn’, who did not wish to be identified, has accused the man of kidnapping her several times.
During the abductions, she said she was injected with ice, raped, stabbed and bashed multiple times by various men in a Broadmeadows unit in January and February.
In May, the 27-year-old perpetrator was jailed for 18 months – with a six-month non-parole period – for breaching an intervention order by calling and texting Marilyn 1646 times earlier this year.
He could be out on parole as soon as September.
In the meantime, he has been interviewed by Moorabbin Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team police over the most serious allegations.
They were unable to comment on the allegations or the investigations.
Marilyn’s mother ‘Cheryl’ has written to the Board of Corrections pleading for the man not to be released early.
Cheryl said the man would not adhere to parole conditions or a two-year full intervention order.
He had offended earlier this year despite being on bail and a community corrections order at the time.
He had also just been released from jail for family violence offences.
“(Marilyn) said to me that as soon as he gets out, she’s leaving home. We are the victims and we are behind bars.
“What crime have we committed?
“I want him behind bars for a lifetime.”
The victim, who has an intellectual disability, was suffering nightmare flashbacks as she recuperated from her wounds.
She is receiving counselling, drug rehab and chiropractic treatment but it will take a long time to recover, her mother said.
“She has withdrawn from everyone, lost faith, lost trust, has no life whatsoever,” Cheryl stated to the Board of Corrections.
“(The man) had practically claimed her life.
“I don’t wish for any mother to go through what I went through, or for any young girl to lose her life like my daughter has,” she told the Board of Corrections.
Cheyl has said the police let them down.
Broadmeadows police had claimed they were too busy to check on the unit in which Marilyn was imprisoned, Cheryl said.
Desperately, Cheryl tracked her down at the unit herself and then rang for police help.
Despite being on a corrections order, the man was released without charge and kidnapped Marilyn again in February, Cheryl said.
“I didn’t think I’d see her alive again. I’d put her clothes away.
“I was thinking I’ll have to identify her body, I didn’t think I’d find her.”
In the midst of the kidnappings, a Springvale police officer applied for an intervention order due to the man repeatedly calling Marilyn and Cheryl, as well as threatening to kill Marilyn and to release a sex tape of her.
The order accused the man of sitting outside her house for seven hours while calling and sending her messages.
He threatened to drive the vehicle through the house, the application stated.
“Police have serious concerns for the safety and welfare of the (victim) due to the obsessive and escalating violence exhibited by the (man),” the intervention order application stated.
Cheryl said politicians’ “nice and beautiful words” as they talk against family violence was meaningless.
“You have to enforce it,” she said.
