By Cam Lucadou-Wells
An ice-fuelled man and two accomplices have invaded his ex-partner’s house at 4am, brutally bashing her father and terrifying the ex-partner and her daughter, a court has heard.
At the time, the man was banned from the house as part of an intervention order.
After sending about 50 threatening texts, the man broke into the house with his sister and current partner, police told a sentencing hearing at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 19 November.
The intruders found the ex and her young child hidden under a blanket in a bedroom. The victim was on a phone trying to contact triple-0.
The man snatched the phone out of the victim’s hand, verbally abused her and punched her father in the face.
As the father curled in a ball on the floor to protect himself, the accused’s current partner stomped on his head.
The ex-partner tried to call police on a second phone, which was also taken from her.
When the intruders left, she used a third phone to call police.
The father received medical treatment for his bleeding head.
The next day, the accused was intercepted in a vehicle with fake plates with the letters ‘WTF’ in Carrum Downs.
He was found with a gram of ‘ice’, one of the stolen phones from his ex as well as a phone-shaped taser.
In response to the victim’s allegations, the man later told police that “she likes causing trouble”.
“I’m not going down for someone’s bulls***.”
Defence lawyer Neville Rudston described the accused’s behaviour as “disgraceful”.
Mr Rudston told of the man’s difficult childhood with parents who were alcoholics at the time but now recovered.
Ironically, the man had “quite a sensitive side”. He had been given meth by friends to “cheer him up” after the mother of his children died from cancer some years ago.
It became a “downward trajectory” with he and the victim once sharing the same drug issues. They lived with their kids in a car at one stage.
Magistrate Pauline Spencer rejected ‘victim-blaming’ arguments that the victim also sent abusive texts to the accused.
In the exchange, he had threatened to run her over and warned that she was going to die.
In her police statement, the victim stated: “I was giving it back to him but I was genuinely scared he was going to kill me.”
“She’s telling him to ‘f*** off’,” Ms Spencer said.
“It’s a way of telling him to stop.”
Ms Spencer jailed the man eight months, including 112 days served in remand. She ordered a full intervention order to protect the victims.
The man had to get his drug use under control, Ms Spencer said.
“Taking meth and going around to the house was a big mistake.
“The little one’s in the room and that would have been really scary.
“I know you want to be a good dad. You can’t be a good dad if you use violence.”
