by Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Noble Park North musician who raped a sleeping, intoxicated teen after a party in 2017 has been jailed.
Buom Kuoth Bol pleaded guilty at the Victorian County Court after the victim-survivor had been twice cross-examined.
She and her female cousin had met Bol, who was 28 at the time, at a party in late 2017.
Both women went back to Bol’s house that night where they became ill after drinking shots and smoking cannabis.
The 19-year-old victim-survivor awoke at 8.30am to find Bol digitally penetrating her and attempting to have sexual intercourse without her consent.
When she accused him of rape, Bol allegedly said “I only tried to put it in”.
In her victim impact statement, she said she felt “so strongly violated that I had to take action and report what happened”.
“I had to show the females in my community that need to try to get justice for yourself and stand up for your right to be safe and protected, even if you don’t have the support of your family.
“In all of this I had to push myself and find my voice.”
She stated that Bol didn’t know the “pain and shame” that she had to live with every day.
“You’re not entitled to feel that you have the right to violate someone because they are vulnerable or not in their right state of mind.”
In sentencing on 25 October, Judge Richard Maidment noted that Bol and the victim-survivor were both from the South Sudanese Nuer community.
In recent psychological reports, Bol resorted to “victim blaming” and a “sense of entitlement” which didn’t sit well with his claims of remorsefulness, the judge noted.
Bol had argued that there was a cultural expectation to sleep with women who came back to a man’s home.
The accused was much to blame for the significant court delay, but in that time he had stopped his partying and substance abuse, the judge noted.
A series of glowing references depicted Bol as a “caring” spouse and “strong and devoted” father who was mentoring young people and refugees through music and respected women.
As a child, he experienced several “traumas” in a refugee camp in Egypt before arriving on a humanitarian visa in Australia in 1997.
Since then, several close relatives had been murdered here and in Africa. He’d endured bullying and racial abuse in Australia.
The judge accepted Bol suffered depression and anxiety but not the claims of complex PTSD or that it was linked to his offending.
At the time, Bol was likely affected by alcohol and drugs, which didn’t mitigate his high moral culpability.
Bol was unlikely to offend again, the judge found.
He was jailed for three years, with a 21-month non-parole period.
