Sentenced slashed for man who set pregnant girlfriend on fire
A Victorian man who set his pregnant girlfriend on fire has had his sentence dramatically reduced by the Court of Appeal.
Yavaz Kilic, 22, was sentenced to 15 years’ jail with a non-parole period of 11 years for a string of charges after the attack on his girlfriend when she announced she wanted to end their relationship.
After unsuccessfully trying to drag her out of a friend’s car, Kilic doused his 12-week pregnant partner with petrol.
"You want to make my heart burn, now you can burn, b***h," he said before he set her on fire with a cigarette lighter last March.
The woman suffered burns to 20 per cent of her body and the pregnancy was terminated.
She was put in an induced coma for five days and spent another nine days in the intensive care unit.
Kilic was jailed for 14 years for intentionally causing serious injury, the second longest sentence ever handed down for that particular charge.
During sentencing County Court Judge James Montgomery said he "found it hard to recall a more serious example of this type of offending in my 38 years in the criminal law".
"Can we open the newspapers on any day without an account of some man inflicting violence on a woman in a minor or major way?" he asked.
"I made the comment before that it leads me to a conclusion that for some men, it seems like there is a war on women. So I have to impose a sentence that sends a message to the community that this just will not be tolerated."
But 10 months on from the sentencing, the Court of Appeal has decided to slash the jail time by one third, finding Judge Montgomery too "emotional".
The Age reports Justices Robert Redlich and Simon Whelan believed Judge Montgomery was influenced by the horrific photographs of the victim’s wounds.
"Every judge, no matter that they may have great experience in the area of the law in which they are presiding, is at risk of being unduly influenced by factual matters which are unexpectedly placed before them," the justices said.
“[The photographs] were the sort of matter that was inherently likely to elicit an emotional response.”
They also said the judge should have taken into account Kilic’s age and compared the outcome of the attack to that of similar assaults where the injuries sustained had been much worse.
Kilic will now serve 10 years and 10 months in prison with parole after seven years and six months.
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