By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A psychiatric report has been ordered for a man pleading guilty to threatening to kill his estranged spouse who had separated from him up to seven years ago.
Over several days in February, the 42-year-old man defied an intervention order and bail conditions with abusive text messages, visits to the family’s home and taping a hidden mobile phone to the partner’s car, Dandenong Magistrates’ Court heard.
Police prosecutor Leading Senior Constable Amber-Lea Browne said the ex-partner took a photo of the man watching her load their children into her car from the opposite side of the street.
The former wife then drove off before he could talk to her.
The man texted her, calling her an “old pig” and telling her to “go back to where you come from”.
More text-messages followed from the phone of a friend of the accused, though the complainant believed they were written by her former husband of 15 years.
The messages called her a “sick b****” and a “first-class b****”.
“Do you know what it’s like? Are you even human?
“You deserve everything you are going to get.”
On 8 February, the man’s mother contacted the police and the ex-partner warning that the man was walking angrily around the house, saying he’d kill the spouse and go to jail.
The ex-partner removed herself and her children to a friend’s house in Berwick – but the man tracked them down and was captured on CCTV in front of the house 5am the next day.
During the visit, the man taped a mobile phone to the exhaust of the partner’s car.
While in remand, the man sent a hand-written note in Bosnian to his ex-partner – which “spoke volumes” of the man’s “absolute despair”, his defence lawyer said.
Since the incidents, the man – a problem drinker – had expressed suicidal ideas and blamed his wife for “setting him up”, the lawyer said.
He tried to track her car out of a misguided belief she was trafficking drugs with her children in the car, the lawyer said.
“It says something about his mentality.
“He clearly needs psychological help. He has had problems accepting the relationship is over.
“He can’t see his kids and he needs to contact a family lawyer.”
The man told the court that his 50 days on remand in Port Phillip Prison had been a “wake-up call”.
“I don’t pose a risk.
“At that point of time, when it all happened, I was drinking heavily.”
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen said he wouldn’t release the man until a psychiatric report was submitted to the court.
He said the mother’s concern and reporting her son to police and the ex-partner was particularly significant.
“I hear what you’re saying – I promise, I promise, I’m gonna, I’m gonna … I expressed it very clearly to you (at a previous hearing) you can’t breach the intervention order.
“I need to know what risk you pose to your family if released.”
