A notorious African sex criminal who raped an elderly woman has been jailed for six weeks for breaching a high-risk offender order imposed when he was released from a Tasmanian prison.
Christo Brown, 29, had escaped without any extra time in custody for five previous breaches, but Deputy Chief Magistrate Ken Stanton told Launceston Magistrates Court on Tuesday that the Sudanese refugee could not keep treating his accumulated jail time “like a bank account”.
Brown was locked up for breaking into a home in Launceston in 2015 and violently raping his 76-year-old victim in her bed, but was controversially let out in October last year, despite community anger and calls for him to be deported.
The Tasmanian Supreme Court determined last year that a high-risk offender order was necessary as Brown posed “an unacceptable risk of committing another serious offence”, but the convicted rapist has repeatedly breached the order by consuming alcohol, violating his curfew, and possessing illegal drugs.
The court heard Brown had used jail time that had not been allocated to an offence to be immediately released while being sentenced for other bail breaches in August and earlier this month, and still had one month and seven days remaining, The Mercury reported.
On Monday he was arrested again after police tried to contact him after his curfew but he did not answer his phone, and he was then caught with methamphetamine in a ziplock bag and pills in his underwear.
Mr Stanton said the latest breach of the high-risk offender order was the most serious so far, and that his non-compliance was undermining the effectiveness of the order.
“It is clear previous penalties have still not deterred him from further offending,” he told the court.
“In those circumstances a more substantial sentence of imprisonment is required. If it was any less Mr Brown could treat it like a bank account and would draw down when required and it would undermine the deterrent effect the sentence would have.”
Brown’s five-year order includes the curfew, electronic monitoring, mandatory counselling, a ban on drugs and alcohol as he had been drinking at the time of the rape, and a requirement that he seek permission to leave Tasmania.
The refugee fled to Melbourne immediately after the 2015 attack, but his DNA was found on his victim’s nightgown, and in 2018 he was extradited to Tasmania to face trial after being jailed for 277 days in Queensland for sexual assault while on bail for the Launceston rape and aggravated burglary charges.
His trial heard that his victim, who prayed for him after the rape and gave him a religious pamphlet titled Our Daily Bread, would suffer from the effects of the attack for the rest of her life.
Furious Tasmanians responded to the order by starting an online petition calling on Immigration Minister Tony Burke to deport Brown, who came to Australia as a child, in order to protect public safety.
Header image: Left, right, Christo Brown.
