Man jailed for cricket bat assault, cruel ambulance deception

In October 2025, a 24-year-old man struck his partner across the upper back with a cricket bat during an argument at their Canberra apartment. The blow fractured her spine at the base of her neck, leaving her on the floor with a tingling sensation radiating through her body. When she contacted a medical service for guidance, they told her to call an ambulance. She begged him repeatedly to get help. He refused.

Instead, he questioned whether her injury was real. He suggested the assault was her own fault. He told her he was taking pleasure in her pain because he believed she had wronged him during their argument. Then he performed what the court would later call a "deliberate and cruel" deception: he pretended to call an ambulance and maintained that fiction for more than half an hour, all while she lay on the floor with a serious spinal injury. When he finally left the apartment, he told her he did not want to "get into trouble." She was left alone to call for help herself.

Ambulance officers brought her to The Canberra Hospital, where imaging confirmed the fractured spine. She spent three days in the hospital, frightened and in constant pain. For seven weeks afterward, she wore a neck brace around the clock. She eventually moved to Sydney to live with her parents while she recovered. Even now, she continues to experience neck pain and stiffness.

On August 5, 2026, the ACT Magistrates Court published its decision. The man, who worked for the Department of Home Affairs, was sentenced to two years and five months in prison, with an 18-month non-parole period. He will be eligible to apply for parole in January 2028. He has been suspended from his position as a result of the crime.

In his defense, the man claimed he had been dissociated and in shock, which explained why he did not seek medical help. Magistrate Ian Temby rejected that account. "I listened to the audio recordings of his exchange with [his partner] following the assault and he is calm, deliberate and cruel," Temby said. The magistrate found that the man's own words at the time—that he was taking pleasure in her pain—revealed his true state of mind. The reason he withheld help was not confusion or trauma; it was calculated cruelty.

Temby also found no genuine remorse. The man had accepted praise from his partner when she said it was brave of him to call the ambulance. He claimed he had called because he really loved and cared for her. When she questioned whether he was lying about having made the call, he repeatedly insisted that he had. These were not the words of someone taking responsibility. They were the words of someone constructing a false narrative to protect himself. The magistrate was not satisfied that the man's mental health conditions or childhood experiences had any direct bearing on his decision to assault his partner or to withhold help afterward.

The victim's identity has been protected by the court. She is one of thousands of Australians who experience intimate partner violence each year. Her case is notable not only for the severity of the injury but for the deliberate cruelty layered on top of it—the refusal to help, the false call, the 30 minutes of deception while she lay injured on the floor. The sentence reflects that aggravation. What comes next is the long work of recovery, both physical and psychological, and the question of whether the man will ever understand what he did.