A former Lancefield resident who felt that no punishment was “good enough” for his terrifying spree of sex offences has been jailed for seven years.
Russell James Reid’s offences included an attack on a woman in front of her two young daughters in a shopping centre toilet as they screamed hysterically.
The woman later asked in her victim impact statement why “my two innocent girls had to witness something so horrible” and that their cries and screams “still haunt me”.
The County Court heard that after that incident, Reid entered a South Yarra home and exposed himself to a girl, six, and soon after digitally raped a woman nearby as she walked to work.
Reid, 23, earlier pleaded guilty to charges of rape, aggravated burglary, committing an indecent act and indecent assault.
In sentencing him on Wednesday, Judge Jane Patrick said such offences caused fear and trauma to the victims and also fear in the community and that the only motive perceived was for his sexual gratification.
Judge Patrick said such offending was the type that “outrages the community and makes women and other vulnerable people feel very unsafe in public paces or even in their homes”.
In ordering him to serve a minimum term of four years and six months – less 308 days served on remand – she mitigated the sentence because of factors that included his guilty pleas, which indicated genuine remorse, and his youth.
Judge Patrick also accepted, on the basis of reports by a forensic psychiatrist, that for the purposes of sentencing Reid at the time was suffering an underlying mental health condition that reduced his “capacity for sound judgment”.
Prosecutor Luisa Dipietrantonio said that Reid committed the offences in a 17-hour period between November 4 and 5 last year.
Ms Dipietrantonio told Judge Patrick that before the offences other women had complained about him approaching them and that police who later spoke to Reid described him as “aggressive, evasive and erratic”.
Reid first grabbed the woman from behind in toilets at the Highpoint shopping centre and indecently assaulted her as her children, aged five and two, became hysterical and screamed at him to stop.
Ms Dipietrantonio said she fought him and they then fell to the floor as her children “tried to come to her aid” before he calmly left the toilet and ran away.
He was arrested about 6pm after committing the other offences and, said his counsel Barnaby Johnston, was paranoid and delusional in an interview with police.
Mr Johnston told Judge Patrick that Reid had had a loving, normal childhood and came from a law abiding family, but had lost his mother at 12, his father at 18 and started drinking and taking drugs that included ice.
A psychiatrist reported that Reid, who had never been diagnosed with mental health problems, was “in the throes of psychosis” during the offending and was likely to have had bipolar-affective disorder or schizo-affective disorder.
Judge Patrick noted that the victims continued to suffer pain and anxiety, and while it was hoped that they would gradually put the offences behind them, she expected they would “never forget them”.
She considered Reid’s prospects for rehabilitation as “reasonably good” if he kept off illegal drugs and continued treatment for his mental health issues.
“It is too early to tell whether you will be able to do that once you are released into the community,” Judge Patrick told him.
But for his guilty pleas, he would have been sentenced to nine years with a minimum of seven years, she said.
