Louis L'eveille, you have pleaded guilty before me to once charge of intentionally causing serious injury and you have admitted a prior conviction. The facts underlying your offending are as follows.
Just after midnight on 2 January 2017, you were present at the home of your sister, Mary Goda and her husband, Cedric, and their two year old daughter, Grace at Unit 8, 71 Hammond Road, Dandenong South. There had been an occasion involving neighbours and two friends coming over for dinner on New Year's Day, where everybody had been drinking. The guests had just left after midnight and you and your brother-in-law went to the garage to sit and talk.
It appears you were, on the observations of your sister, drug-affected. She did not see you smoking but she could smell smoke on you and you had been drinking earlier. She could sense you were getting angry. She heard the start of a conversation between the two of you which appeared to be heading towards an argument and she tried to calm you down because you were angry and breathing heavily.
At that stage, you pushed Cedric to the wall. Your sister tried to separate the two of you. She then saw you punch Cedric Goda to the side of his head and he fell to the ground and hit his head on the concrete floor. You then kicked your brother-in-law to the face area, your sister stating that she was not sure how many times but that it was "a lot of times." During this, she was trying to pull you off her husband and calling for help. She managed to push you away after you picked up some sort of implement from the garage and prepared to his Cedric with it. You went into the house and started smashing things.
Eventually, police were called and when they arrived, they could hear banging, crashing and vocal noise coming from inside the unit. They went inside, where they found you in the kitchen throwing things out of the fridge and cupboards onto the floor. Police said you appeared to be either drug or alcohol affected or to be experiencing a psychotic episode or similar.
You refused to obey police directives to lie on the ground. Eventually, capsicum spray was successfully applied. You were handcuffed and taken back to the Dandenong police station.
Initially, you were assessed by a doctor as unfit to be interviewed. Eventually, when you were interviewed later that afternoon, you made admissions to attacking your brother-in-law, that you told police you had drunk five or six glasses of whiskey and smoked synthetic cannabis. You admitted to hitting your brother-in-law as he was on the ground and unconscious. You said you did not remember anything more but eventually did recall kicking Cedric two or three times.
You said you had been smoking cannabis throughout the year, presumably referring to 2016, and that in January 2016, you had fought your brother-in-law. It would appear that this fight occurred because of a continuing delusion you had that your brother-in-law, Cedric, and your former wife, Cynthia Gresler, were having an affair.
In March 2016, you were placed on a community corrections order on charges of assault and criminal damage, whereby after smoking, presumably, synthetic cannabis in the garage of your home in Dandenong, which you shared with your then wife, Cynthia Gresler, you came inside and accused her of having an affair with your brother-in-law, insisting that you had seen him come into the house. Ms Gresler denied this and you punched her a number of times until your sister and her husband, Cedric, arrived and separated the two of you.
You, at your wife's request, you left the house but returned several days later. Your wife had gone to stay with her sister. You entered the empty unit and caused what would seem to be extensive damage to the property, including $8000 worth of damage to fixtures such as flyscreens, shower screens, kitchen cabinets and walls. You also caused $2500 worth of damage to your former
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wife's property, including a TV, fridge, microwave, stereo and TV cabinet.
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At the time that you appeared before the Magistrates' Court you had no prior convictions. You were placed on a community corrections order which included conditions to undertake unpaid community work, to attend for psychological assessment and treatment and to attend treatment for drug use.
At the time of this offending, you had just begun a second round of the drug treatment organised by Corrections because you were continuing to use synthetic cannabis. It is quite clear, in my view, that your use of the synthetic cannabis meant that the delusion about your brother-in-law and your former wife continued.
You had not been able to undertake a psychological assessment and treatment because you were in Australia only a spousal VISA, were not entitled to Medicare benefits and hence, would have had to pay for such treatment which you could not then afford. Corrections were in the process of seeking a grant to pay for such treatment.
You had completed, and this is to your credit, most of your community work which was carried out between April 2016 and January 2017. Of course the offending that has brought you here before this court is an escalation or more serious example of the offending that you engaged in in 2016 and appears to have arisen from the same cause which was not resolved despite your participation in what had been able to be provided by the community corrections order.
Your offending breaches that order but I regard it as a mitigatory factor that the psychological problems you were experiencing arising from your continued drug addiction underlay both sets of offending.
I now turn to your personal circumstances. You are 31 years of age and were born in Mauritius, the youngest of four children. Your father was apparently extremely violent and alcoholic. Your sister, Marie, who attended court wrote a reference confirming the violence of your father and noted that you were the one most affected by this.
So bad was the effect upon you apparently that you were moved out of your family home to live with your grandparents. You were apparently very afraid of your father during your childhood. According to psychologist, Dr Aaron Cunningham, whose report dated 27 July 2017 was tendered on the plea, "this led to a general paranoid and anxious orientation to the world".
You attended school to the age of 18, then studied carpentry and joinery but had difficulty finding work in Mauritius. You relocated to Australia when you were 21 to live with your wife who you met through the internet. You described her to Dr Cunningham as a "nice good person".
Unsurprisingly that marriage collapsed following your assault upon her in January 2016 and you have no further contact with your wife who is seeking to divorce you. At the time of this offending you were living with your sister and brother-in-law.
Dr Cunningham said that you have been prescribed the anti-psychotic drug, Risperidone, in gaol. You described previously having distressing memories about your father's violence. You told Dr Cunningham you experienced auditory hallucinations when you used synthetic cannabis or kronic which because you are now in gaol and have no access to drugs have stopped.
You had also begun abusing alcohol when your marriage ended.
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Dr Cunningham said you presented with insight into how irrational your thinking was at the time you offended in January this year. Dr Cunningham stated,
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"Mr L'eveille's presentation is consistent with the presence of a substance induced psychotic disorder. He experienced paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations in the context of synthetic cannabis abuse. These paranoid delusions formed on a background of his own experiences of trauma." I should note that you have used cannabis from the age of 14, this becoming abuse of synthetic cannabis in Australia which in Dr Simmons' opinion was used by you to regulate a paranoid and anxious emotional state that you developed as a result of your father's violence.
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Dr Simmons continued, "In my opinion Mr L'eveille's prior experiences of trauma led to increased risk of paranoid delusions when abusing significant amounts of substances." He believed that your loss of emotional control and violence when you assaulted your brother-in-law "was precipitated by the disinhibiting effect of his drug and alcohol abuse".
Mr Goda suffered serious injuries including brain injury and a fractured skull which required surgical intervention, admission to the intensive care unit of the hospital and the use of life preserving measures such as breathing apparatuses.
He was required to undertake rehabilitation and still suffers some slight memory loss, however in his victim impact statement notes that he has largely recovered and returned to work.
You maintain the support of your sister who as I have said wrote a reference in support of you and attended court to support you, as did your mother who has flown from Mauritius to support you. You have remained in custody since January this year being held on remand at Marngoneet Prison but being unable to access rehabilitative programs because of your remand prisoner status.
It was the view of Dr Cunningham that you had protective factors reducing the risk of re-offending, including a supportive family and your own awareness of your irrational thoughts and need for mental health support.
In sentencing you I take into account your cooperation with police, your early plea of guilty, which I accept is a genuine expression of remorse for your offending. You have also pleaded guilty to breaching your community corrections order.
I accept you had an extremely difficult childhood which left you with an anxiety condition which you have dealt with by way of self-medication using cannabis and then synthetic cannabis since the age of 14. Ultimately this has led to a psychotic delusion which has lasted for a considerable period of time and which, as I have said, underlay both the offending before this court and the offending in January 2016 for which you were placed on a community corrections order.
I also accept that your English is limited and that any term of imprisonment, and (I note it is conceded by defence that only a term of imprisonment is appropriate in this case), will be more difficult for you than the normal prisoner.
I note that on your release from prison you will be returned to Mauritius because of the demise of your marriage and hence this spousal visa which allowed you entry here in the first place. I regard you as having reasonable prospects for rehabilitation as long as you do not engage in cannabis use.
It is pretty straightforward, Mr L'eveille, you use marijuana, you become paranoid and hear voices, they get you into an agitated state about something happening that actually is not and you act on those voices and attack someone. I hope you understand that. If you had not been using cannabis and alcohol you may still be married, working, staying in Australia and not living day to day in gaol and awaiting deportation.
Cannabis has not been any sort of answer to your problems, it has only made them worse. I therefore sentence you as follows. Could you stand up please? I should also add I hope you realise that had you kept going and attacking your brother-in-law you might have killed him. If that had been the case you would be spending at least 15 or 16 years in gaol.
Again, this all because you were using kronic. Do you understand how dangerous that drug is for you? It literally makes you go mad.
OFFENDER: Yes, Your Honour.
HER HONOUR: On the charge of intentionally causing serious injury I sentence you to two years and four months' imprisonment. In relation to the community corrections order I will not sentence you for the breach and simply confirm the order, but in relation to the original offending underlying that order I sentence you to six months' imprisonment and I order that two months of that sentence be served cumulatively or on top of the sentence of two years and four months.
That gives a total effective sentence of two years and six months. Because of the circumstances I have referred to I accept your counsel's submission that there be a more lengthy period than usual between the maximum and minimum term and I order that you serve 14 months before becoming eligible for parole.
I declare that 215 days of this sentence have already been served by way of pre-sentence detention. So you have got about six or seven months to go before you can apply for parole.
Pursuant to s.6AAA I declare that had you not pleaded guilty I would have sentenced you to a term of imprisonment of three years and ordered you serve a minimum term of 20 months. That is everything, thank you. Have a seat, sir.
Is there anything else I need to attend to?
MR REGAN: No, Your Honour.
MR REARDON: No, Your Honour.
HER HONOUR: Thank you. I thank counsel for their assistance. You are excused. Thank you very much.