Two former cops who kicked and stomped on a naked mentally ill woman and pepper-sprayed her genitals will spend at least three years behind bars.
Nathan Black and Timothy John Trautsch pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman during an arrest on January 22, 2023, then sent body-worn footage to a colleague, bragging: ‘We caved her.’
The pair faced a sentencing hearing at Penrith District Court on Friday afternoon, and both bowed their heads when they finally learnt their fate.
Judge Graham Turnbull sentenced Black to five years and nine months in prison with a minimum term of three years and three months.
Trautch was jailed for five years with a non-parole period of three years.
Judge Turnbull previously described the act of pepper-spraying the woman as ‘gratuitous cruelty’.
‘I struggle with what the possible reason was, beyond the intention to inflict gratuitous pain,’ he said last month.
Acting NSW Police Commissioner David Hudson condemned the actions of both former officers, describing their behaviour as ‘unforgivable’.
Former cops Timothy Trautsch (above) and Nathan Black, who kicked and stomped on a naked mentally ill woman and pepper-sprayed her genitals, will spend at least three years behind bars
An internal investigation was commenced immediately after the attack and both officers were removed from the force as soon as possible.
‘As a police officer of over 40 years, this is one of the worst examples of contravening our core values and ethics I have ever seen,’ Mr Hudson said.
‘This behaviour completely contradicts the commitment we make as officers to uphold the values and ethics of wearing the blue uniform.
‘It is simply not what we stand for as police who make a pledge to protect the community.
‘I’m very sorry for what the victim endured especially when it was at the hands of police officers who were called there to assist her.
‘This type of behaviour is not acceptable at any level within the New South Wales Police Force.’
Black and Trautsch launched the savage 18-minute assault on the woman after she was found nude and bathing in a puddle in an Emu Plains street in Sydney’s west.
The victim – who cannot be named for legal reasons – had earlier been released from the nearby Amber Laurel Women’s Correctional Centre.
Nathan Black (above) and Timothy John Trautsch pleaded guilty to assaulting a mentally ill woman during an arrest on January 22, 2023, then sent body-worn footage to a colleague
She had walked 300m to Smith Street, an industrial cul-de-sac lined with smash repair and auto shops, where she stripped naked, triggering the welfare check call to police.
The court heard the woman, 48, had been given antipsychotic medication for her schizophrenia, but had not taken it.
Trautsch, then 27, and Black, then 26, attended the scene and attempted to get her into an ambulance to go to hospital, prior to the violent assault.
At one point, sitting naked on a grassy footpath, the woman told the officers: ‘If you touch me, you are f***ed and I mean f***ed.’
After trying to handcuff the woman, she resisted by grabbing the cuffs and the officers responded with rapidly escalating violence.
The footage of what happened next is so confronting, NSW Police tried to get it suppressed for 60 years, purportedly to protect the woman from further trauma.
But Judge Turnbull agreed to play the video, taken from body-worn cameras and CCTV, at their sentence hearing.
Smith Street, Emu Plains (above) where the outrageous attack on a naked and ‘floridly psychotic’ woman was perpetrated with physical and verbal assaults and pepper spray
The footage showed the woman being pushed onto the road, kicked twice in the head, dragged by her hair, and punched while she sobbed and screamed at the men.
‘God, make me strong. God, make me strong,’ she said over and over. ‘God, please. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I’m sorry, God.’
The two officers struggled to handcuff her on the ground as she lashed out with her arms, while spraying her six times with pepper spray.
The woman was sprayed twice in the face, once on her back – already grazed from the rough road surface – and once on her genitals.
At one stage, the woman defecated on the road and onto Nathan Black’s leg. ‘Wash your dirty stinky a***,’ one of the officers was then heard saying.
They discussed using a Taser and a long baton, with Trautsch visibly laughing.
Black messaged a colleague about that they had emptied two cans of pepper spray at the woman, boasting that ‘the whole body-worn is so good, shows her being f***ed’.
The woman died in unrelated circumstances 18 months after the attack.
Former cops Nathan Black (left) and Timothy Trautsch (right) stomped on the woman and boasted they emptied two cans of pepper spray onto her face and genitals during an 18 minute assault
Judge Turnbull said one of the officers was ‘gloating’ about the footage.
He said the pair had ‘got to the stage where they are defecated on, a suggestion of bodily fluids, she is completely unable to recognise who they are.
‘There’s just the two of them. The circumstances got to that these two men just lost the plot.’
Crown prosecutor Nicholas Marney told the court that the two officers could simply have restrained the woman, noting she posed no threat to them, despite grabbing at the handcuffs.
When the woman was eventually taken to Nepean Hospital, Black told medical staff, ‘You have to do what you have to do.’
The men were charged in March 2023 and suspended without pay.
When Crown prosecutor Nicholas Marney replayed the disturbing footage in court last month, Black and Trautsch sat apart in the dock staring straight ahead.
Black pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm, using a prohibited weapon without a permit and three counts of common assault.
Timothy Trautsch (above, left, in suit and sunglasses), then aged 27, assaulted the defenceless woman with his partner Black in an attack recorded on body-worn video and CCTV
He also admitted two counts of intentionally publishing protected information after sending snippets of the body-worn footage to another police officer.
Trautsch pleaded guilty to one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, three counts of common assault and one count of using a prohibited weapon without a permit.
Judge Turnbull said both the use of pepper spray on the 48-year-old woman’s wound and her genitals appeared deliberate.
‘I see things with my own eyes. The video had the potential to speak for itself. (There) seems to be a spray almost deliberately towards the vagina,’ he said.
The judge expressed mild surprise that, following the incident, the two officers – who have since left the police force – charged the woman with two counts of assault.
‘I have to say after four decades of experience, it is not uncommon in tight spots for people to be charged, or should I say, it does happen to deflect attention.
‘The person becomes not just a victim but a defendant.’
Judge Turnbull said that the victim’s ‘presentation was … pretty fearsome. It evolved’ and that the initial response of the police ‘reflected straight out threats of harm, standing in the middle of the street like a bull, in her florid psychotic state’.
But he said that the ‘way she’s being struck and sprayed would increase her agitation, the way she’s kicking out’.
