true crime

A man filmed himself sexually assaulting his step daughter. Yesterday, a judge dropped four years from his sentence.

A West Australian man who repeatedly sexually assaulted his step daughter and later raped her mother at knife point has had four years cut from his prison sentence following  a successful appeal.

The 49-year-old man, who can’t be named to protect the identity of his victims, was originally sentenced to 20 years in June, according to the West Australian.

The Court of Appeal heard the girl was 11 or 12 when the abuse began with her step father repeatedly sexually assaulting her while supposedly looking after her at a farm, around 2011.

A year later, he assaulted her again, but this time he filmed it, telling her to “stop whingeing” as she cried.

The girl’s mother left the man when she learned what he was capable of, but six months later he threatened her with a knife during an argument.

He then cable-tied her wrists, forced her into a car and took her to an abandoned van where he raped her at knifepoint and then stabbed her.

She escaped by jumping out of a moving car as he left the scene.

In the original hearing, the man pleaded guilty to the raft of charges filed against him and yet appeal judges found his sentence “did not bear a proper relationship to the criminality involved”.

He will now be eligible for parole once he has served 14 years.