Director of Public Prosecutions v Faumui

[2025] VCC 316

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

Revised

Not Restricted

Suitable for Publication

AT MELBOURNE

CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR-24-01655

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

VILIAMU FAUMUI

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MAIDMENT
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	24 January 2025
DATE OF SENTENCE:	20 March 2025
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Faumui
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2025] VCC 316

REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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Subject:             Plea - sentencing

Catchwords:     Intentionally causing serious injury,

Legislation Cited:    

Cases Cited:     

Sentence:         6 years and 6 months' imprisonment, non-parole period 4 years

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Ms V. Worrell	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Ms J. Ball	Slades & Parsons Solicitors

HIS HONOUR:

1Viliamu Faumui, you have pleaded guilty to an offence of intentionally causing serious injury, for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 20 years, occurring on 13 April 2024 at your home in the early hours of the morning, the victim being your wife. 

2You have also admitted prior criminal convictions, two of which involved assault, although not in the same category of assault as this. 

3The prosecution tendered and read to the court a summary of opening upon the plea dated 19 December 2024.  That was Exhibit A at the plea hearing, and it describes events briefly as having occurred in the early hours of the morning of 13 April 2024.

4During the evening before, you had been at home on the decking at the rear of your residence at Dandenong North and were drinking.  Your wife of 30 years or thereabouts arrived home at about midnight or 12.30 on the morning of 13 April.  She brought with her 24 cans of VB beer to which you helped yourself without any issue with your wife.  You sat with her drinking and smoking for some hours after she arrived home.  She apparently made some comment suggesting that you were lazy and that you should buy your own alcohol and cigarettes rather than assume that you could take hers. 

5That caused you to be somewhat resentful of having been the breadwinner and provider for many years and having lost your job in the weeks prior to your offending as a result of racking up more than 12 points on your driver's licence.  At about 4.30 am, as a result of her comments about you being out of work and drinking the alcohol that she had bought and smoking the cigarettes that she had brought with her, you picked up a screwdriver from near your position on the outside decking and stabbed your wife to the front of her head twice.      

6Some of your children heard what was going on and came to her rescue.  They found you standing over your wife who was on the floor at that stage.  You were seen to be striking her with a closed fist in a strong downward motion.  One of your sons put his arm around you and physically pulled you off your wife.  Other children arrived to see their mother lying on the decking with blood all over her face.  She was not moving.  Police were called and attended.  You were arrested at about 4.40 am and taken to Dandenong police station. 

7Police observed upon their arrival that your wife had sustained an injury and that she was bleeding significantly from her head.  She was treated by paramedics at the scene and transported to the Alfred Hospital in a critical condition.  Police accompanied her in the ambulance.  You were asked what had happened and you admitted that you had stabbed your wife with a screwdriver 'as she had woken the devil inside you'.  The other officer also had a conversation with you in which you confirmed that you had stabbed her with a screwdriver. 

8At about 12.48 pm on 13 April, you were interviewed by police at the Dandenong police station.  You made admissions, but claimed that she had been self-centred about her attitude to you taking her drink and cigarettes, that you got angry and grabbed the screwdriver to 'shut her up'.  You indicated that you remembered being pulled back by your son.  Whatever level of alcohol you had had by the time of the incident and whatever mental illness you were suffering from, it was clear that you were able to give the police a fairly accurate account of what took place and of your motivation for the attack upon your wife.

9Your wife was admitted to the Alfred Hospital on the morning of 13 April 2024 and underwent a craniotomy to repair her penetrating brain injury resulting from your attack with the screwdriver.  She had internal bleeding in the brain and her injuries at that time were described as life threatening.  She sustained a series of injuries, including the penetrating brain injury which had penetrated through her skull onto the very deep brain structures.  There were significant skull fractures, a significant brain bleed, fracture to her left external auditory canal, left ear drum perforation and left ear laceration and a multi-fragmented fracture to the left inner skull bone that combines the eye socket and the base of the skull.

10Your wife suffered functional brain damage as a result of her injuries including severe communication difficulties - officially labelled 'severe dysphasia' – and memory loss.  Her loss of memory appeared to last for at least two weeks which is considered a significantly long time, amounting to the identification of a very severe functional brain injury, and she suffered cognitive impairment.  Following her admission to hospital on that day, she was in intensive care between 13 April and 25 April 2024, a total of 12 days, and received various treatments which are detailed in the prosecution opening. 

11She required long-term rehabilitation for an acquired brain injury with significant cognitive problems.  Her bone fractures will take several weeks to months to heal and consolidate.  It will take at least several months, probably years, for her head injury and cognition to fully recover.  There is a risk of bone fractures not healing, ongoing pain, ongoing cognitive impairment, seizures and psychological sequalae due to the injuries.  Without the treatment provided in hospital, her ear injury was likely to cause functional and cosmetic problems.  It is not disputed that the injury caused was a serious injury and you have admitted that you intended to cause a serious injury.

12Your counsel provided me with a defence outline of submissions dated
21 January 2025 which was Exhibit 1 at the plea hearing, a report dated
20 January 2025 from consultant forensic psychologist Dr Michael Davis, Exhibit 2, and a report from neuropsychologist Laura Scott, dated 16 January 2025 which is Exhibit 3.  Exhibit 4 was a letter in your handwriting addressed to me.  I do not normally pay much attention to letters of that kind from persons about to be sentenced; however in this case, I accept that it is a genuine reflection of your remorse.

13It is entirely consistent with the letters that I received from two of your daughters.  Both letters are dated 14 January 2025, and they are in combination Exhibit 5.  Exhibit 6 includes a certificate from Alcoholics Anonymous & Narcotics Anonymous, indicating that you have been an important member of eight meetings at the Fulham Correctional Centre.  That is dated 17 October 2024.  It may well be that there have been further attendances.  Along with that certificate are a number of other certificates from the Kangan Institute showing the programs that you have engaged in in an endeavour to promote your rehabilitation and make use of your time whilst on remand in custody.

14Your counsel has made no bones about the fact that you face a significant term of imprisonment. 

15You were born in Samoa in February 1967.  You are the third of seven children, raised in Samoa primarily by your maternal grandparents.  Your mother died several years ago and your father in 2016.  None of your siblings lives in or near Dandenong North, but you have a good relationship with them. 

16At the age of 18 you migrated to New Zealand to find work and in 1993 you met your partner wife at a pub and you now have 10 children together aged between 29 years of age and 10 years of age.  All but two of your daughters still reside at the family home.  You moved to Australia in 1998 with your partner and then three young children.  You have lived here ever since, and you are a permanent resident of Australia.  You were not a particularly successful student at school in Samoa.  But it seems you have had a truck driving licence since 1999 and that you continued in that line of work until three weeks before your offending took place, losing your licence as a result of demerit points.  You were subsequently laid off from that job.

17You began drinking when you first moved to New Zealand.  Over a number of years that progressed to drinking daily.  It was a habit of you and your wife to drink together to unwind after work.  You reported drinking until you do not remember anything.  One of your children died of SIDS and your drinking increased after that death.  Around the time of your offending, you were regularly drinking anywhere between six and 12 cans of full-strength beer a night.  You had apparently been drinking continuously for about four hours before your wife returned home sometime at or shortly after midnight. 

18You continued drinking for much of the next four hours prior to the attack upon your wife.  You had also been smoking cannabis around the same time as you began to drink.  From the age of 30, you were smoking approximately 5-7 grams of cannabis daily.  You also dabbled in other drugs, including methylamphetamine.  Dr Davis, in his report, found that you meet the criteria for cannabis use disorder and alcohol use disorder.  You had a heart attack about 10 years ago which required a stent.  You have also been diagnosed with diabetes, although that does not seem to be being treated at the present time.

19You have other health issues including osteoarthritis of your knee.  You apparently refuse to attend further out-of-prison hospital visits because you experience extreme claustrophobia in the prison bus.  The reports of Dr Davis and Ms Scott are very helpful in identifying mental impairments which have been diagnosed by Dr Davis as schizophrenia.  The first episode, an acute episode, was occurring at the time of his examination of you.  He was unable to determine precisely when your psychotic illness began, but you reported to him that you only began hearing voices after receiving a head injury in a 1988 car accident.

20You have, as your counsel readily acknowledges, two convictions for violent offending in 2016 and 2023, neither of which related to your wife.  Your counsel submits that I should assess the objective gravity of your offending on the basis that the attack was unprovoked but spontaneous.  It involved the use of a weapon.  Your victim's injuries are grave.  The assault occurred in your home with many of your children asleep nearby and those essentially are aggravating features of your offending.  It was Dr Davis’ and Ms Scott's opinion that your cognitive impairments would have been present at the time of the offending and would have been exacerbated by acute psychotic symptoms which would likely have been significant contributors to your offending.

21Dr Davis observed when he examined you that you remained floridly psychotic even without prolonged abstinence from alcohol and cannabis.  The question of the extent to which, if at all, your mental impairments are capable of reducing your moral culpability for this offending is complicated by the fact that you had a very considerable quantity of alcohol and an unknown quantity of cannabis at the time of your offending.  Your counsel readily accepts that the impacts of your mental health and acquired brain injury, which may be attributed to trauma and/or alcohol abuse or drug abuse, must be tempered by the consumption of alcohol and drugs prior to the offending.

22However, all of those matters are not irrelevant and I endeavour to give them proper weight in determining an appropriate sentence.  I have already made passing reference in discussion with your counsel about the fact that your letter, and indeed the letters provided by your daughters, support the conclusion that you are genuinely and deeply remorseful for your offending.  That is very much to your credit and bodes well for your prospects of rehabilitation.  As I have already indicated in discussion with your counsel, one must be guarded I think about your prospects of rehabilitation at this stage because, as Dr Davis points out, your risk of reoffending is linked to effective management of your mental health and substance use.

23The information that has been conveyed to me about examinations by psychiatrists or other specialists within the Corrections system suggest that you are not receiving any treatment for your mental impairments.  Or to the extent you are receiving any treatment, it does not adequately address the mental impairments that have been diagnosed by Dr Davis and/or Ms Scott.  Whilst that is concerning, it is very difficult to understand or know the reasons for that and the extent to which you have been properly examined by suitably qualified practitioners.  I do not have sufficient information to make an assessment about the quality of the treatment or diagnoses that have been made within the prison system.  It is not something over which I have any control.  I simply say that it is to be hoped that whatever treatment you need within the prison system can be provided to you and that proper assessments are made of your ongoing and changing needs for treatment for physical and mental health within the prison system.

24A person with your mental impairments is likely to find doing your time harder than a person without those impairments.  The extent to which your incarceration is likely to exacerbate your mental illnesses is unclear, and I am not able to draw a firm conclusion about the application of the Verdins principle which addresses that consideration.  However, I take into account all of the information that I have received about your mental and physical ailments in the general sense as well as in the specific sense of acknowledging that it seems to me that it will make your time in custody harder.

25Your counsel accepts in her written submissions and generally that I must give proper weight to just punishment, protection of the community and general deterrence.  I have indicated and repeat that my approach must be guarded in relation to your prospects of rehabilitation at this stage.  But it seems to me that your remorse is a very strong indicator of your willingness to apply whatever assistance you may receive and whatever programs you may be able to enter into to promote your rehabilitation whilst serving your sentence.  It is to be hoped that those will have an impact on the extent to which you qualify for parole.

26Your counsel accepts that I must impose a lengthy term of imprisonment to satisfy the various sentencing needs, including specific deterrence - that is deterring you, because you have, although clearly less serious, two convictions for offences of violence in your record.  Doing the best I can to marry all those sentencing considerations, I sentence you as follows.

27For the offence of intentionally causing serious injury, you are convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for six years and 6 months. 

28I fix a non-parole period of four years. 

29I declare 341 days presentence detention as time to be reckoned as served on the sentence that I have imposed. 

30But for your pleas of guilty, I would have sentenced you to imprisonment for eight years and six months with a non-parole period of six years. 

31Are there are any other orders that I need make.

32MS WORRELL:  No ancillary orders, Your Honour.  Thank you.

33HIS HONOUR:  Thank you. 

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