{"id":87677,"date":"2023-11-15T20:39:07","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T20:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebritytidings.com\/?p=87677"},"modified":"2023-11-15T20:39:07","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T20:39:07","slug":"wa-man-admits-to-horrific-sex-attack-after-almost-four-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebritytidings.com\/world-news\/wa-man-admits-to-horrific-sex-attack-after-almost-four-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"WA man admits to \u2018horrific\u2019 sex attack after almost four decades"},"content":{"rendered":"
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.<\/p>\n
A serial violent sex offender has been brought to justice almost 40 years after raping a woman and rendering her unconscious by bashing her head on a garden bed.<\/p>\n
Robert Barry was 22 years old when he committed the violent rape at Traralgon, in Victoria\u2019s Gippsland region.<\/p>\n
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The case was heart in the County Court on Tuesday.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Darrian Taylor<\/cite><\/p>\n After the August 1984 attack, Barry left town and moved to Western Australia with his partner and child, where he continued on a path of sexual violence.<\/p>\n Now aged 61, Barry is serving a 12-year prison sentence for offending against three young girls in WA.<\/p>\n This includes the deprivation of liberty and sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl in 1991, indecent exposure to a 16-year-old that same year and the aggravated sexual assault of a 15-year-old in 1993.<\/p>\n He changed his name from Robert Johnson to Robert Barry in 1991.<\/p>\n Barry faced the County Court via video link from a Victorian jail cell on Tuesday, after being extradited from WA to face justice for the garden bed attack.<\/p>\n He started running towards a 24-year-old woman, who had just left her friends at a bar in Traralgon, about 10.30pm on August 25, 1984.<\/p>\n She was walking towards a tree when she noticed he was running at her on the grass.<\/p>\n The woman waited under the tree for him to leave and once she thought it was safe she started walking, but Barry grabbed her from behind.<\/p>\n She was frightened and froze, as Barry put his hand over her mouth, pinned her arms to her sides and dragged her into a garden area.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t look at me,\u201d Barry told his victim.<\/p>\n He began to rape the woman and when she struggled and tried to get away, Barry pushed her down and repeatedly bashed her head against a wooden sleeper on the garden bed.<\/p>\n She lost consciousness, and when she came to she ran to a nearby house where they called police.<\/p>\n The following morning a friend visited the woman at her home and said she looked completely unrecognisable, with bruises and cuts covering her face.<\/p>\n Forensic evidence, including swabs, were taken from the woman and items of clothing were seized, but none of it could be tested until improvements in DNA technology in 2012.<\/p>\n Barry was found to be a match, and he later pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated sexual assault.<\/p>\n Prosecutor Andrew Grant described the offending as \u201ceveryone woman\u2019s worst nightmare\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMinding your own business, going home from a social night on a weekend, and then worrying about this sort of thing,\u201d he told the court.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clearly objectively grave, it is horrific offending,\u201d Judge Nola Karapanagiotidis replied.<\/p>\n Defence barrister Jo Swiney said Barry, who was working as a furniture removalist when he was arrested in 2016, accepted he faced additional time in prison.<\/p>\n She said he was a \u201cvery heavy drinker\u201d at the time, and claimed he committed that and the other sex offences while alcohol-affected, but had not re-offended since the mid-1990s as he has addressed the alcohol abuse.<\/p>\n Karapanagiotidis indicated she would hand Barry a \u201csubstantial\u201d term of imprisonment.<\/p>\n He will be sentenced on November 23.<\/p>\n 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)<\/strong><\/p>\n National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028<\/strong><\/p>\n