Woman sentenced after driving knife through pet cat's skull
A woman who drove a knife through the skull of a pet cat was sentenced on Thursday for the "particularly gruesome" crime.
Ashley Dwyer-Talereck came to the attention of police when they were called to help evict her from a Conder home on August 23 last year.
When officers arrived they found knives and replica guns in 22-year-old Dwyer-Talereck's room.
While at the property, residents alleged to police the woman had killed a cat.
The woman was arrested and subsequently spent more than 40 days in custody.
When police seized her phone, they found a graphic picture of the bloodied cat with a knife through its skull.
Investigations found the photo had been uploaded to a Facebook page dedicated to morbid curiosities.
Dwyer-Talereck told authorities she had watched the cat die.
She had gone to hospital after the killing with a cat bite and stab wound, and was admitted over concerns about her mental health.
Dwyer-Talereck pleaded guilty in the ACT Magistrates Court to aggravated cruelty to animals, possessing a prohibited firearm and the unauthorised possession of firearms.
Before she was sentenced the court ordered a forensic mental health report be prepared.
The report found she suffered from various mental illnesses.
The author of the report said it was likely that at the time of the animal cruelty offence, the woman had been experiencing hallucinations telling her to kill the cat. It was likely, the doctor said, that the killing had been an attempt to silence the voices in her head.
But she would have been unable to deal with it in a rational way.
The woman's defence submitted her moral culpability for the crimes was lower because of her mental illness and also that a sentence of imprisonment would weigh more heavily on her, and that was accepted by the court.
The court heard the woman, who now lives in Queensland, was responding well to medication.
Prosecutors said there was a degree of pre-meditation to the cat-killing in her website research.
They noted the injuries to the woman, and how she had watched it die.
"The animal clearly suffered prior to dying," the prosecutor said.
Magistrate Peter Morrison agreed with prosecutors that the cat-killing was objectively serious.
He said the killing was "particularly gruesome".
He also accepted, with relation to the pistols, that they were replicas and not connected to any illegal activity.
The mental health report said Dwyer-Talereck's tendency was to collect and not use the weapons, though the magistrate acknowledged her gruesome use of a knife to kill the cat.
The magistrate sentenced Dwyer-Talereck to a two-year good-behaviour order. A condition of the order is that she complete any assessment or programs as directed, particularly in relation to mental health or drug use.
Colonel Morrison warned Dwyer-Talereck the conditions were compulsory, and were in place to help her deal with her mental health and allay concerns about any danger she posed to the community.
Dwyer-Talereck will be subject to supervision where she lives in Queensland.