By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A serial stalker who harassed his ex-partner with a barrage of unwelcome phone calls has unsuccessfully pleaded not to be sent back to jail.
“I’ve been in for 21 days (in pre-sentence custody),” the distressed Hampton Park man told Dandenong Magistrates’ Court, while promising he’d never re-offend again.
“It’s been total hell and I’ve learnt from it.”
Magistrate Pauline Spencer noted she’d heard similar arguments after his last five-day stint in custody.
Indeed he re-offended on the same day that he was released by her on a community corrections order.
“We were pretty clear the first time (you were in court).
“I need to be very clear to you that this isn’t the way to go.”
The man insisted that his young son was “missing me so much”. He said he was suffering throat cancer, while a friend offered the court $5000 surety for his release.
“I can’t believe this,” he said.
He had been arrested days after the victim first received clusters of private-number calls on 1 September.
In one early call, the man told her: “F*** the police. They don’t have to know I’m contacting you.”
She didn’t answer his persistent calls that evening, nor over the next three days. In the meantime, police say he swapped SIM cards in his phone while still using a private number.
According to a psychological report, the man had a significant problem with impulse control, his defence lawyer told the court on 26 September.
“I’ve said to him there’s no way on Earth you can be out breaching intervention orders again.”
Magistrate Spencer jailed the man for two months due to the repeated nature of the breaches. The stalking caused great harm to the victim, she said.
“We have to be clear to people in the community that these orders are serious.”
The man was jailed for two months, and his phone was forfeited.
On his release, he will re-start his CCO with judicial monitoring and mental-health treatment.
