A man who sexually assaulted his stepdaughter and raped her mother at knifepoint has had his sentence reduced by four years in the Western Australia Court of Appeal.
The 49-year-old man, who cannot be named, pleaded guilty to the sexual offences and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in November 2014.
The girl was aged just 11 or 12 when the man first assaulted her while under his care on a farm in regional Western Australia. The court heard on another occasion in 2012, he filmed his attack, telling her to ‘stop whinging’ when she began to cry.
When the girl’s mum found out, she left him. Some six months later, the man threatened the woman with a knife, tied her up and sexually assaulted her at knifepoint before stabbing her.
She escaped by jumping out of a moving car.
Yesterday, three Court of Appeal judges reduced the man’s sentence, saying it sentence ‘did not bear a proper relationship to the criminality involved’, reports The West Australian.
The man will now be eligible for parole after serving just 14 years.
