Weeks after the birth of her son, Lutfiye Kavci left her controlling husband and returned to live with family, knowing she couldn't raise a baby in a home with domestic violence.
The move was supposed to keep her safe from Mahmut Cigercioglu's controlling tendencies, but he found ways to keep confronting her with efforts to rekindle their relationship.
She had no interest and so on October 15, 2021 he tried to kill her.
Then he told a jury that she had violently and repeatedly stabbed herself because he told her he didn't want to be with her anymore.
That story was frankly implausible and it's unsurprising a jury found him guilty of attempted murder, Victorian Supreme Court Justice Mandy Fox said in sentencing Cigercioglu to 15 years behind bars on Thursday.
He'll have to serve 12 years before he's eligible for parole.
“You put thought into how you wanted to end my life,” Ms Kavci told Cigercioglu in confronting the violent and "evil" man in an earlier pre-sentence hearing.
On the day of the attack he dived through an open window in her car, while their son was in his capsule in the back seat, and forced her into the passenger seat before driving her around town.
He punched her in the head twice when she tried to wave down help, while confronting her over a belief she was speaking to another man.
Ms Kavci described feeling like like an end was coming, and one nearly did.
At one point Cigercioglu stopped to collect a knife he had hidden earlier in the day, slipping it up his sleeve before returning to the car.
Ms Kavci saw the blade and tried to escape, but Cigercioglu knocked her to the ground and repeatedly stabbed her, including twice straight through her left palm as she defended herself against his violent blows.
"You don't deserve to be the mother of my baby," he told Ms Kavci before indicating she did deserve to die.
The attack only stopped when the knife broke, and Cigercioglu got in her car with their son and drove away.
Ms Kavci's recovery in hospital took months, and she accepts she'll be healing - both physically and mentally - for the rest of her life.
She has to recover not only from her physical injuries but from Cigercioglu's control, his verbal abuse, his sick words, the way he looked at her and used her body.
"I am still here," she said.
Justice Fox said a psychologist found Cigercioglu had more than likely experienced trauma during his time in the Turkish military.
He was found to be quick to display hostility, easily offended, often irrational and have limited behavioural controls, and to have multiple risk factors for further intimate partner violence.
Nothing suggested his attitude would change or improve over time, the court heard.
Cigercioglu, who came to Australia on a partner visa after marrying Ms Kavci in Turkey in 2020, will be deported after serving his sentence.
His lawyer David Cronin previously revealed Cigercioglu maintained an unrealistic belief that he would be able to stay in Australia and some day have a relationship with his son.
“The fact he’ll be removed from the country and therefore not have a relationship with his son is going to weigh heavily on him when that realisation hits,” he said.
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