An ex-One Nation staffer has been handed a five-year prison sentence for the assault and rape of a woman in Brisbane in 2007. The sentence will be suspended after 27 months.
Found guilty earlier in July of one count of rape and two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm, Sean Black is a former media adviser to ex-Senator Malcolm Roberts.
While one juror disagreed with the guilty verdict for the rape charge, Judge Glen Cash accepted the majority vote from the remainder of the jury.
Black was accused of violently attacking the woman, raping her, and threatening to shoot her in the head. In prosecutor Brendan White‘s closing statement, it was said that during the first assault in April 2007, Black tried to pull the woman down a staircase while repeatedly calling her a “filthy dog”.
Black also slammed a door on her fingers in October 2007 and made fun of her bruises a few days later, the woman said. The court heard that he raped her after she told him not to hit her any more.
When the woman confronted Black about the assaults, he allegedly hit her in the stomach before threatening to kill her. It was heard that Black then said “I will shoot you in the head and I will kill you,” before he snatched and broke the woman’s phone.
Black’s barrister, Rick Taylor, argued that the woman was lying and that the images of her bruises shown to the jury were “modest” and could be attributed to “common daily activity”.
