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Michael John Danyon Fraser, 26, was yesterday sentenced to two years and three months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to assault with intent to commit sexual violation, strangulation and assaulting a female.
It was not Fraser’s first time before the Dunedin District Court.
Less than three years ago, juries in two separate trials cleared him of a range of charges following similar allegations of sexual violation by three women.
The court heard the victim was socialising with friends at Eleven Bar and Club in the Octagon in the early hours of April 23 last year.
She met Fraser and agreed to go back to his home.
However, during the night the tone abruptly changed.
It began when Fraser struck the woman with a "forceful" slap, hard enough to later leave a bruise on her jaw.
When the victim told him not to do it again, the man laughed and said he thought she would like it. The pair continued with consensual acts, but "without warning" Fraser put his hands around her neck and squeezed until she was unable to breathe.
Court documents detailed how the woman struggled for up to 20 seconds before the defendant stopped.
She went to the bathroom and messaged her friend to pick her up, then returned to the bedroom to inform Fraser of her plans.
He responded by forcing her on to the bed, his weight pressed against her shoulders.
The victim brought her knees up to her chest and repeatedly yelled "no" and "stop" as Fraser tried to part them.
He told her she was not leaving and there was a brief respite when he got up to close the bedroom door.
But when Fraser returned to the bed, he again pinned her down.
"You’re not going anywhere," he said. "You can’t leave."
They struggled for several minutes, the court heard, before Fraser released her, and yet the ordeal was still not over.
While the victim tried to get dressed, the defendant tugged at her pants to stop her then lifted up her top to grope her.
Once the woman finally escaped the property she almost immediately made a police complaint.
She told the court yesterday, in a tearful statement, that she had spent the months following the attack "surviving and not living".
"Michael’s life goes on, but he doesn’t have to deal with the emotional turmoil ... day-in, day-out," the victim said.
"I know this is something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life."
Much of the legal argument at sentencing focused on Fraser’s autism spectrum disorder.
Crown prosecutor Pip Norman accepted the defendant’s diagnosis, but said he still knew right from wrong.
"The fact he had to assault and detain the victim shows he fully understood she was not consenting and he had to use physical force," she said.
Defence counsel John Munro said a psychiatric report indicated Fraser’s actions were heavily influenced by his disorder and his inability to understand signals.
"We have a young man who did not understand what was going on that night in terms of reading the victim’s cues," he said.
"His offending is driven by a lack of empathy."
Mr Munro argued his client should receive home detention so that he could attend specialist sex-offender treatment.
Judge Jim Large accepted Fraser might struggle to read social cues, but he could not have been left in any doubt by the victim’s protests, verbal and physical.
"No means no," he said.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Mr Munro indicated he would appeal the decision and sought bail for Fraser.
The judge declined the application.
