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District Court 7 March 2025

R v Dhankhar

[2025] NSWDC 42

Sexual offencesDrugsPublic order & justice offences
CRIME SENTENCING INDECENT ASSAULT (3 COUNTS) OBJECTIVE SERIOUSNESS OF OFFENCES SUBJECTIVE MATTERS

Citation: R v Dhankhar [2025] NSWDC 42
Court: District Court of New South Wales
Date: 7 March 2025
Judge: King SC DCJ

Background

The offender, a man now aged 45, was convicted by jury of 39 offences committed against five young South Korean women over a nine-month period in 2018. All five victims were in Australia on work, holiday, or student visas and responded to a Gumtree advertisement for a Korean language interpreter or translator role. The job, the business advertising it ("Asia Partnership"), and the identity the offender presented were entirely fabricated.

After conducting a sham interview, the offender invited each victim to dinner and then to his studio apartment at World Square in Sydney. There he surreptitiously administered prescription sedative drugs to render each victim unconscious or severely impaired, before sexually and indecently assaulting them and recording his offending on a mobile phone or a covert camera disguised as a clock radio. None of the victims had expressed romantic interest in the offender, and several had explicitly rejected him.

The offending came to light only because of recordings the offender retained on electronic devices for his own sexual gratification, and an Excel spreadsheet he maintained recording each victim's personal details and his assessment of their vulnerability and suitability to his plans. The jury returned guilty verdicts on 24 April 2023 following a trial that commenced on 27 February 2023.

  • The appropriate aggregate sentence for 39 counts spanning six categories of offending against five victims
  • The objective seriousness of the individual offences, including the relevance of the standard non-parole period (SNPP) for sexual intercourse without consent offences
  • Whether the offender genuinely obtained prescription medications for a personal health reason, and the significance of that question to the seriousness of the offending
  • How the principle of totality and the principle in Cahyadi v R (requiring some accumulation where one sentence cannot comprehend the criminality of another) should apply to the aggregate sentence
  • The weight to be given to subjective matters, including the offender's age and prospects of rehabilitation, against the purposes of sentencing under s 3A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999

Decision

King SC DCJ found the offending to be at the highest end of objective seriousness. The judge described the conduct as "an egregious sequence of planned predatory conduct against young and vulnerable women over a significant period," characterised by premeditation, elaborate deception, and callous disregard both for the victims and for the offender's own family. The creation of a fictitious business, false names and email addresses, a fake website, and the covert recording devices, combined with the Excel spreadsheet tracking victims, demonstrated a sophisticated and researched criminal enterprise.

His Honour rejected the contention that the offender had obtained prescription sedative medications for genuine personal use. Even if that claim had been accepted on the balance of probabilities, the court found it would have made little difference to the seriousness of the offending. Administering such medications to young women without their knowledge, without any professional assessment of potential drug interactions or allergies, and in combination with alcohol, represented an acute and independent danger.

The court applied the sentencing purposes set out in s 3A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999, including denunciation, community protection, specific and general deterrence, and accountability. His Honour noted that drug-facilitated sexual offences are increasingly prevalent and particularly difficult to detect and prosecute, because the administered substance deprives victims of memory of the offending against them. Both specific and general deterrence therefore carried significant weight.

Applying Cahyadi v R, the court found that no single sentence could comprehend the totality of the criminality across five victims and six occasions, and that some notional accumulation was required. The offender's age and the prospect that he would be substantially older before becoming eligible for parole were acknowledged but did not alter the outcome. The court was satisfied that no lesser sentence would properly reflect the seriousness of the offending or the purposes of sentencing.

Orders Made

  • Aggregate sentence of 40 years' imprisonment imposed, comprising a non-parole period of 30 years with a balance of term of 10 years
  • Sentence backdated to commence on 13 April 2023, reflecting time spent in custody from the conclusion of the trial
  • Non-parole period expires 12 April 2053; parole period expires 12 April 2063
  • Pre-trial custody of 11 days taken into account in fixing the commencement date

Key Takeaways

  • The District Court treated the 39-count course of offending across five victims as among the most serious of its kind, given the degree of premeditation, the elaborate deception employed, the vulnerability of each victim, and the offender's recording of his own offending for personal gratification.
  • Under the Cahyadi v R principle, where a single sentence cannot adequately reflect the criminality of multiple discrete offences against multiple victims, some accumulation is required. Here, that accumulation was notional given the imposition of an aggregate sentence.
  • The prescribed SNPP for sexual intercourse without consent (7 years) and the relevant maximum penalties functioned as guideposts in the instinctive synthesis of sentence rather than as determinative figures, consistent with Muldrock v The Queen.
  • Administering a sedative drug to a victim without knowledge of potential allergies, existing medications, or interactions with alcohol was found to constitute independently serious criminality, regardless of any claimed personal reason for obtaining the prescription.
  • Drug-facilitated sexual offending was identified as an increasingly prevalent category of offence where both specific and general deterrence carry heightened weight in sentencing, given the inherent difficulty in detection and prosecution caused by the victim's loss of memory.

Legislation and Cases Referenced

Legislation
- Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), ss 38(a), 61I, 61L, 91P(1)
- Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW), ss 3A, 54B(2)
- Evidence Act 1995 (NSW)

Cases
- Muldrock v The Queen [2011] HCA 39
- Pearce v The Queen (1998) 194 CLR 610
- Cahyadi v R [2007] NSWCCA 1
- Bravo v R [2015] NSWCCA 302
- Bugmy v The Queen [2013] HCA 37
- GW v R [2018] NSWCCA 79
- R v TA [2003] NSWCCA 191