HIDDEN TRAUMA: 'Disgraceful' attacks in woman's North Albury home

The young mum-of-four, supported by domestic violence advocacy workers, was thorough, spelling out his litany of cruelty in an interview with police, on the choking and punches, the pulling and snapping at her windpipe, with her photos of a chest and neck smeared with bruising.

Once cowed, now healing.

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Ricky Parr had already been charged over like attacks, bringing him before Albury Local Court in late June for more of that choking and punching and for pulling her to her feet by the hair.

Back then Parr effected a contrite demeanour, said he'd plead guilty and listened quietly as magistrate Richard Funston warned it would be a "serious sentencing matter" when he returned on September 29.

But this wasn't all he had done.

Parr's violence and self-absorbed righteousness and a hollowed-out humanity - exacerbated by his illicit drug use, but not the cause - almost reached a tragic end-point at other times, too, she told police.

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For the attacks that she revealed, combined with the initial string of charges, he was handed 32 months' jail this week. Parr learnt he could have got five years.

"I understand that," he said, "and I'm really thankful, your honour."

Minutes earlier, he briefly broke his again-calm demeanour with a random comment that jarred Mr Funston, who asked what Parr had said.

"Nothing," he muttered. "Just talking to myself."

Police prosecutor Sergeant Andrew Coombs let Mr Funston know what he'd heard. "He said 'what the f--- are you looking at?'"

The trauma and fear - and the intense coercion she did not recognise until she underwent professional help, once Parr was refused bail - lasted many months.

The pair met in Melbourne in September, 2019 and soon after began a relationship.

The first choking attack over which he was charged was in March, 2020, part of a continuing though sporadic pattern for the next 15 months.

But despite all that she suffered she wasn't thinking of herself, as much as she was living in fear.

During the first attack, after he had moved into her Wantigong Street, North Albury home, she felt a "tingling" sensation as his choking stretched out for 30 seconds, almost losing consciousness, all within earshot of a girlfriend in another room.

Three months later they argued, he pushed her in the chest, she fell backwards over a chair and he punched her, but still she managed to run from the hallway because she didn't want her boy to witness such violence.

Even while beset with the thought during another choking attack that she was about to die, she worried for her children and their trauma in coming across her lifeless body on the floor.

Once, he pinned his body against hers, using his free hand to push into the wall so he could pivot to the best angle for dialing-up the pressure with his other, squeezing hand. Her body "began to float", she couldn't breath, her eyes "felt as if they were going to explode" and her ears began to ring.

Once, she sat in her car, frozen, convinced he would behave badly during a visit to a friend's home in Englehardt Street. Two of her girlfriends got out and went into the unit, then emerged to her screaming, his yelling, her car shaking. He had tried to strangle the now 28-year-old from a back passenger seat, had slammed her head into the door.

Once, she sat quietly with a girlfriend, again in her car, and said she'd had enough. It was very early on a Sunday morning, back on May 23, and they had gone to collect a friend.

"I am sick of the way he treats me, I am sick of the way he carries on."

Parr was hiding in the boot. He called out: "What, really?" The friend fled as the woman tried to lock the car, but Parr had already got in via a back passenger door.

He climbed over the centre console, sat beside her and waved a 14-centimetre knife in the air.

She was terrified, pleading with him to "put the knife down".

"I'll kill you," he said, then promised to do the same to himself. On another occasion, again after wrenching her throat, he did self-harm: the first cut didn't bleed, but a second, deeper laceration bled so strongly she had to stem the flow with some clothing.

And yet another argument, in which he told her: "I am sick of you. You don't know what I am capable of."

A week after his first court appearance the 27-year-old was back in custody, appearing via a video link to Junee jail over an incident Mr Funston described as "deeply troubling".

HIDDEN TRAUMA - IN DEPTH:

A further 18 charges were laid, including six of intentionally choke a person without consent and using an offensive weapon with intent to commit an indictable offence.

These resulted from her marathon interview with police, in which she went into almost forensic detail about the other horrors Parr had inflicted.

Defence lawyer Tim Hemsley said Parr did not want his victim to have to relive her trauma. Some matters he recalled, he had a different recollection of others and some were lost to his memory.

"He has no wish to put the complainant through, effectively, 18 hearings," he said. "He wishes to have all these matters finalised today and move on, to move back with his family in Melbourne."

Parr's repeat domestic violence offending was, Mr Funston said, "absolutely chilling" for his victim.

"Mr Parr, there is no doubt that you were extremely aggressive during this lengthy period of time," he said.

"To treat a woman like you treated the complainant beggars belief. Your behaviour is absolutely disgraceful.

"I do accept you have had a very difficult childhood and I also accept you were a person who was ice-addicted at the time.

"But nothing but full-time jail is required."

Mr Funston praised the victim for her courage in detailing the violence inflicted by Parr, who will be released on parole on October 25, 2022, after 16 months behind bars.

Hopefully, he said, this would allow her to begin the process of healing.

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