Top athletics coach who raped his own daughter for more than a decade starting when she was just five years old loses bid for freedom
- Rapist will remain behind bars after losing appeal for 73 convictions for freedom
- Sentenced to 48 years jail for raping daughter from the age of five for 15 years
- He inserted broken tool into daughter and held her underwater as punishment
- His wife who was also jailed, appealed her conviction and sentence
An athletics coach jailed for almost half a century for horrifically abusing his daughter has lost a split-decision appeal over his 73 convictions.
The man, aged in his early 60s, challenged both the NSW District Court jury's 2016 verdicts and the 48-year term given by a judge who dubbed his acts as 'depravity of an almost unimaginable magnitude'.
His wife, jailed for 16 years over her knowledge of the assaults, also appealed her conviction and sentence.
The father raped his daughter numerous times from the age of five. At one point he inserted a broken stool inside of her and held her underwater as punishment (stock)
The Court of Criminal Appeal by majority dismissed all appeals on Thursday, with the dissenting judge finding the jury's verdicts unreasonable.
The victim, who represented Australia as a junior, gave evidence at the trial of 45 separate incidents in the 15 years to 2011.
The incidents ranged from numerous rapes from the age of five, having a broken tool inserted into her and being held underwater in a creek as punishment for perceived weak athletic performances.
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Many of the assaults occurred on the family property in a chicken pen known as 'the shed'.
Justice Desmond Fagan said the jury had to have had a reasonable doubt about the level of detail the complainant was able to recall, especially for those incidents said to have occurred in her younger years.
'Perhaps such physically painful, emotionally confusing and fear-inducing events as the complainant described would have been so impressive in early childhood that, if nothing remarkable had followed, detailed memories would indelibly remain,' he said.
'But the complainant's improbable claim was that she could bring back memories of the individual traumas, with specific sexual details and in sequence, after suffering constant inhuman abuse of a similar kind over more than another decade.'
The man, aged in his early 60s, challenged both the NSW District Court jury's 2016 verdicts and the 48-year term given by a judge who dubbed his acts as 'depravity of an almost unimaginable magnitude'
He also questioned how the victim had asserted she did not appreciate the abnormality of sex with her father until she was nearly 18 while also never speaking about the abuse to any peers.
'If her father's activities appeared normal, on the basis that she thought her family was different and special - as (a psychiatrist) speculated - there would have been no shame and hence no inhibition against speaking of what was taking place,' the judge said.
But Chief Justice Tom Bathurst and Justice Elizabeth Fullerton said it was open to the jury to find as they did after hearing first-hand the complainant's weeks-long evidence and the testimony of the father and mother.
'The verdict was not unreasonable,' Chief Justice Bathurst said.
'In short ... I am left in no doubt that it was open to the jury to return verdicts of guilty on (those counts),' Justice Fullerton said.
Justice Fagan also found the mother's sentence manifestly excessive and would have sliced six years off her full term.
The three judges agreed in dismissing several other grounds of appeal.
The mother is eligible for release in 2027. The father's minimum term expires in 2049.
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