A Melbourne woman was sleeping in bed next to her partner when she felt aggressive biting and kissing on her neck, lips and face.
She woke to discover Lang Kouth, a 21-year-old man who had broken into their house drunk in search of their car keys, touching her genital area and sexually assaulting her, while her baby slept on a mattress at the foot of the bed.
At first she had thought it was her partner, and pushed him away, but when she realised he was an intruder, she woke up her partner and Kouth fled from the room.
Kouth stole the couple’s car and police chased him until he eventually crashed into a tree, fleeing on foot. Police soon caught up with him and arrested him.
ABC News reports that Kouth has been sentenced to more than four years’ jail for his crime. When handing down the sentencing, Judge Michael Tinney said the case was ‘the stuff of nightmares’.
“Waking up in the middle of the night in one’s own bed next to one’s own partner with a baby in the room and finding that a complete stranger is in the bed and upon the person … it’s the stuff of nightmares.”
Judge Tinney added that Kouth “can’t have been thinking right”.
A friend of the victim told ABC News that they didn’t think she would be able to move on from the incident.
“She was terrorised … she’s got to live with that for the rest of her life,” she said.
“She sleeps in the lounge room because she doesn’t want to go to the other end of the house.
“I can’t fix what happened and I don’t think anyone will ever be able to fix it.”
Kouth will be eligible for parole in two years and three months, and Judge Tinney believed that if he treated his drug and alcohol issues he would have a good chance of rehabilitation.
