Just four months after being released from prison for violently raping a teenager, Joel Russo attacked again.
This next rape would be even more shocking.
Russo, then aged 25, grabbed a woman from behind as she walked along a popular Melbourne trail in broad daylight.
She screamed and tried to run away, but he dragged her down a steep embankment into Merri Creek.
Clawing at the ground, she tried to break free again but he threw her down and told her to shut up.
He put his hands around her neck and pushed her head under water for 30 seconds. She thought she was going to die.
Russo said he would let her live if he had sex with her and raped her on the creek embankment.
He heard people walking along the trail and pushed her into the bushes where he raped her again.
After several hours, the woman concocted an escape plan when Russo said she should call her friends to tell them she was alright.
She suggested they go somewhere dry because she was cold and he eventually agreed.
"Sorry for raping you, I’ve ruined your life, haven’t I?" he said, as they walked to a nearby McDonald's.
He eventually left and the woman, crying with twigs and leaves in her hair, went inside the fast food outlet and asked someone to call police.
County Court Judge Liz Gaynor praised the woman's courage, strength and sagacity in the face of such a horrifying attack.
"That she was able to maintain such presence of mind in this nightmarish scenario was remarkable," she told the court.
Russo was arrested later that evening, in the early hours of December 4, 2019, for trying to burgle a Coles Express in Carlton.
Police noticed he was muddy and matched the description of a man wanted for rape when they interviewed and charged him.
He admitted the attack weeks before a trial was due to begin, in September last year.
Judge Gaynor jailed Russo on Tuesday for a maximum of 20 years and four months.
"This was an horrendous sexual attack ... It was predatory, persistent, highly violent, terrifying and prolonged," she said.
The 29-year-old must serve 17 years before he will be eligible for parole.
Russo was previously jailed in 2015 for raping a 16-year-old girl on the pathway of a southeast Melbourne reserve, where he pushed her to the ground and threatened to kill her.
Judge Gaynor said the two crimes had "disturbing similarities" and the threat he posed to women cannot be underestimated.
There was a high risk Russo will reoffend given he had been released from prison just four months before the 2019 attack, she said.
"It is clear you are an extremely dangerous offender," she said.
She said Russo, who is intellectually disabled and has multiple mental health conditions, had fallen through "gaping cracks" in Victoria's corrections' system when he was released without support in 2019.
"Given your offending, personal and psychological history this represented a dreadful oversight by state authorities," she said.
Russo, appearing by video link, remained silent. He has already served three-and-a-half years of his sentence and will be registered as a sex offender for life.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
