WA dad tells stepdaughter 'stop whinging' during sexual abuse

A man who repeatedly sexually assaulted his stepdaughter and later held the girl’s mother captive and raped her at knifepoint has had his prison sentence cut by four years in the WA Court of Appeal.

The 49-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victims, was sentenced to 20 years prison in June last year after pleading guilty to a raft of sexual attacks on the pair.

The court was told the girl was aged just 11 or 12 when the man repeatedly sexually assaulted her while she stayed with him at a farm in regional WA.

A year later, sometime around 2012, the man assaulted the girl while he filmed her - telling her to “stop whinging” when she began to cry.

He then threatened the girl with more harm if she spoke of the abuse.

The court heard the girl’s mother left the man in 2014 when she learned of the attacks.

But around six months later, the man pulled a knife on the woman and threatened to kill her during an argument.

He used cable ties to secure her wrists, forced her into a car and drove her to an abandoned van where he sexually assaulted her at knifepoint, before stabbing her.

She only escaped after jumping from a moving car as the man drove her away from the scene of the crime.

Three Court of Appeal judges reduced the man’s prison sentence to 16 years on Monday, finding the total effective sentence first imposed “did not bear a proper relationship to the criminality involved”.

The new sentence was backdated to November 2014, and the man will be eligible to apply for parole after serving 14 years.

News break – July 11