Mother stabs man through the heart, cuts his penis after he threatened to assault her and her daughter
WARNING: DISTURBING CONTENT
An Australian woman who killed a man who she claims raped her and then threatened to harm her young daughter unless she had sex with him again was sentenced to 10 years in jail by the Brisbane Supreme Court.
35-year-old Roxanne Eka Peters fatally stabbed 51-year-old Grant Jason Cassar through the heart at her home in Capalaba, near Brisbane, in December 2015. After stabbing him, she tied a rope around his neck and body and dragged the corpse behind her car for 1.6 km before disposing of it in a ditch.
According to the Daily Mail, his body was found by a local couple on Degen Road, Capalaba, with over 61 injuries, including 10 cm stab wounds to his chest, as well as similar wounds at the base of his penis and his esophagus. She claimed she had killed Cassar because he had raped her after tying her up and then threatened to harm her child if she did not comply with his requests once again.
The court heard a similar version of events. The Mail reported the comments of prosecutor David Nardone who said that Cassar had broken into Peters' home and asked the 35-year-old, who is said to be a drug addict, to "do a meth cook-up." But when the mother refused to later have sex with him, he threatened to harm her daughter.
This prompted Peters to run to the kitchen and grab a knife. She returned and repeatedly stabbed him "again and again," screaming "you don't rape me" the entire time.
After the killing, she attached the body to the car and dragged it along the streets, even passing by a police station on her way to dumping the corpse.
Presiding Justice David Boddice, in October 2018, noted that Cassar's rape and humiliation of Peters combined with his threats to harm her child had been a "significant provocation." Addressing the mother, he said, "I accept the stabbing occurred in circumstances when you were enraged by what the deceased had done to you and was threatening to do to you again."
However, he pointed out that the 35-year-old did not seek out help immediately after stabbing Cassar. "Instead, you set about the process of callously disposing of the deceased body," he said, adding that Peters had shown "no respect for Cassar's human dignity."
Boddice said that Cassar's family would never recover from his death but said that her "rage continued to affect your attitude to him." He also brought up how Peters' upbringing around drug users, where she was subjected to sexual abuse, compounded the rage she felt when Cassar threatened violence against her and her daughter the day he was killed.
Peters was sentenced to serve nine years behind bars for manslaughter and another 18 months for pleading guilty to interfering with his corpse. Because of the time she has already served in prison for the crime, she will become eligible for parole as early as June 2020.