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AN AUSTRALIAN MAN who repeatedly raped and degraded a terrified Dutch tourist during a six-week ordeal, including carving a cross into her forehead, has been sentenced to 17 years in jail.
Alfio Anthony Granata, 47, pleaded guilty to 14 charges, including multiple rapes, threats to kill and intentionally causing serious injury over a six-week period in 2012.
Victorian County Court Judge Frank Gucciardo said Granata’s behaviour was “vile and repulsive” and had dehumanised his 21-year-old victim.
“The victim was in constant pain,” he said. “She was degraded and humiliated.”
An earlier hearing was told Granata and his former partner Jennifer Peaston met the young bisexual backpacker at a party in Melbourne and they became friends, having consensual sex while smoking the drug ‘ice’, or crystal methamphetamine.
Granata later became obsessed that the two women were having sex behind his back and turned violent, threatening to kill the young woman if she left the hotel room where he and Peaston were living.
He was accused of attacking her, with the help of Peaston, with objects including a rolling pin, vacuum cleaner and a gas torch lighter in a pattern of escalating attacks.
The Melbourne Age said that on one occasion Granata carved a cross into the victim’s forehead, saying it meant she belonged to him and was “marked for death”.
In another bizarre ritual, Granata sealed her photograph, fingernail and hair clippings and blood in an envelope and poured hot wax over her body.
The harrowing ordeal culminated in the tourist stabbing Granata as he slept and then attempting to kill herself. Granata and his girlfriend panicked and called emergency services, bringing an end to events that the judge said would scar the woman for life.
Police said Granata shot extensive video footage of the attacks and it had taken officers six months to sift through it all. Chains, blindfolds and sex toys were also seized from the hotel room.
The defence argued that the offences were linked to Granata’s ice addiction, but the judge rejected this.
Earlier this year Peaston avoided jail after pleading guilty to two charges of intentionally causing injury. She was placed on a good behaviour bond after the court decided that she too had been the victim of sustained abuse.
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God almighty. Not the best thing to be reading over Monday’s breakfast. I hope she gets the help she needs after this experience.
Why not a life sentence? Crazy.
20c bullet.
Sounds like a nice chap.People like him should get the chair .I’d happily pull the switch.
Can anyone make a convincing argument for not executing people who commit such vile sex abuse? Preferably in a quick and satisfactory manner: machine gun to the head (like in Thailand) or as target practice for an artillery unit? I can’t see the logic of locking someone up for 17 years for such a heinous crime. Why should the state (and thus you and I as tax payers) have to pay to keep these people in prison? Has anyone after being locked up for 17 years for rape, murder or child abuse ever come out of prison and made a significant contribution to society? I know this is in Australia but in Ireland the average cost of imprisonment per prisoner was €65,542 in 2013, not including education expenditure. I imagine the costs are similar in Oz.
Too light a sentence for a six week harrowing attack. He should have been given life. A total Pysco.
He should be made sit on a machete. Many times.
Skumbag + Ice = recipe for disaster. Really is a terrible drug.
Ice is very popular over there, awful drug.
Going back to hotels with strange old men to smoke ice is never going to end well.
He should have got life, I hope the decent prisoners give him some jail house justice.
The same thing should be done to him for 27 years. Sick ***k.
Wolf Creek
It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
This piece of dirty filth needs a good hiding. How about carving rapist on his forehead to let the world know what he is
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