By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
A 24-YEAR-OLD Pakenham man who punched his mother in the face as well as a bedroom door and interior walls until his fists bled has been spared jail despite being on a suspended sentence.
The drunken man had allegedly grabbed his mother by her dressing gown and told her “I’m going to rip your head off” and “You think you’re so good don’t you” as they argued in her kitchen about 11.40pm on 6 May.
According to a police summary, the man then allegedly repeatedly punched her in the face, causing a large bump to her forehead.
However, his lawyer told Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 8 August that it was just one punch to her forehead as she stood between him and the bedroom door.
The mother locked herself in her bathroom as she called triple-zero. The man yelled from outside: “Call the f***ing police, I’ll f***ing kill them all.”
About 12.30am, police found the “visibly upset” mother outside the house. They also discovered a large kitchen knife on the floor at the entrance of the house and a bent large kitchen knife on the kitchen floor.
As police tried to arrest the accused, he allegedly swung his hands as if to strike police.
At the time, the man had a suspended seven-month jail term hanging over his head and was on a community corrections order.
The man’s lawyer told the court the accused’s violence was “inextricably” linked to alcohol abuse.
The man had started drinking at 14 years old, and “using” on a regular basis since 18.
The lawyer argued the accused had “done very well” since undertaking his own rehabilitation since the May incident.
“He realises alcohol is what is destroying his relationships and bringing him before the courts.”
Magistrate Gerard Bryant said if not for the man’s rehab efforts, he would have gone to jail for his “abominable behaviour”.
“You need to show respect for your mum and those you say you love and respect.”
Mr Bryant told the man that he should take this “last opportunity” not to “share a cell at Port Phillip Prison with a man a lot older and harder than you are”.
Mr Bryant said the man had been “incredibly fortunate” not to have been jailed for his previous offence, and faced at least 10 months jail if he put “another foot wrong”.
The man was put on a 12-month community corrections order including 120 hours of unpaid work, a six-month exclusion from licensed venues, mental health and alcohol counselling, and judicial monitoring.
His suspended sentence was extended for a further year.
