‘Son of Satan’: Man jailed for 25 years for depraved attacks on women
Warning: This story contains disturbing content
Andrew Males’ victims call him the son of Satan.
A cruel and sadistic man with links to white supremacy groups who took pleasure in raping, bashing and brutalising women across Melbourne’s north and west over two decades.
“I used to think things would always get better with Andrew, but I think I always knew there was evil in him. He’s like the son of Satan,” one victim said.
The many faces of Andrew Males.
On Thursday, Males, 43, was jailed for 25½ years for what a judge described as sustained and devastating attacks against four women.
The County Court heard there were no other cases like Males’ recorded in Victoria’s history. Police sources described him as one of the worst perpetrators of sexual and family violence the state had ever seen before he was finally arrested in 2015 and later charged with 20 years of abuse.
Judge Patricia Riddell said Males’ abating violence and sexual offending included some of the worst examples of the crime. She praised the courage of the women who not only survived their attacker’s abuse, but took their stories to trial.
Riddell said research showed abused women were less likely to report violence when it came from a partner than a stranger, as feelings of emotional attachment and self-loathing were often complicating features. She acknowledged the crimes left the victims scared, humiliated and ashamed.
The judge told Males: “They have brought you to justice”.
“The community is sick of, and sickened by, the cowardice of men like you,” Riddell said.
“The sinister nature of intimate partner violence is exacerbated by the fact it is often hidden. A secret scourge on the community.”
Despite fronting courts almost every year of his adult life, the court heard Males had avoided charges for sexual crimes until recently, offending against new and former victims every time he was released from custody from the age of 18.
While some of his offending is too graphic to detail, the court heard he repeatedly choked his victims until they passed out, raped one victim while she was unconscious and beat another with a hammer.
One of Male’s teenage victims had known him for only days when he forcibly held and abused her for weeks in a bungalow behind his Altona North house. He raped another in the dining room of his mother’s house.
The four women were vulnerable, some homeless and others young mothers, the court heard. They had nowhere to go when Males befriended them before they started relationships.
Males was charged with more than 130 offences against nine women in 2017, but five women’s cases did not proceed to trial.
Following two separate trials in 2021, he was found guilty of 24 charges against four women, including nine counts of rape and 10 of intentionally causing injury.
Court records show Males had been dealt with by the courts almost every year of his adult life until his arrest. Those crimes included jail terms and suspended sentences for violence and weapons offences, armed robbery, and placing others in danger of death.
Andrew Males in more recent years.Credit:
He was on bail, and on parole, for other crimes during his offending against the four women.
Court records also show Males was earlier convicted over violent assaults on two other women with “chilling” similarities.
“Despite repeated involvement with the authorities and periods of incarceration, you continued to commit serious examples of violence and sexual violence,” Riddell said.
“A lifetime in the criminal justice system did not deter you.”
A formal risk assessment has since declared Males to be at the highest risk category of reoffending, and the judge acknowledged he would pose a serious danger to women when released.
Males, who had failed to show any remorse, yelled abuse at his victims on Thursday, but his insults were muffled by the glass in the dock.
Males must serve 20 years and 10 months before he is eligible for parole.
He will also be on the sex offenders register for life.
Outside court, one victim, Julie, whose surname has been withheld, told The Age she hoped the lengthy sentence would encourage others to come forward.
Still physically and emotionally scarred by the abuse she suffered for more than eight years, she urged other women not to stay quiet.
“I never thought police would believe me if I reported it because when he did was so horrible, like something out of a horror movie that no one would think was real. But they did,” she said.
“If you stay, the pain is only going to get worse.”
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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