A man who brought a torture kit to a hotel room to brutally attack a sex worker with a hammer will spend the next seven years behind bars.
Matthew Sean Donaldson was sentenced in the NSW District Court on Friday after pleading guilty to one count of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to murder.
The 44-year-old hired the woman for a “sadomasochistic sexual experience” in a Sydney hotel room in February 2021.
Donaldson brought a hammer, knife and ball gag to the room, cut off the women’s underwear and got into an argument about the moralities of people selling their bodies for sex before launching into a “crazy frenzy” and attacking her with the hammer.
After the incident, the self-professed gaming enthusiast posted a photo to Facebook of the hotel room before the attack writing, “game over”.
The victim, a then 26-year-old woman who worked as an independent escort to pay for her study in Australia and support her son, spent almost three months in hospital.
The court heard she suffered a traumatic brain injury and underwent a skull reconstruction where pieces of bone were removed and repaired with screws and plates.
The now 29-year-old lives with ongoing cognitive impairment including a permanent reduction in vision, poor balance and coordination, impaired memory, uncontrollable shaking in her legs and feet and poor sleep.
Donaldson, who appeared emotionless via video link in prison greens, told a psychiatrist he had never sex before and had a history of perusing sadomasochistic pornography on the internet, Judge Antony Townsden heard.
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He said he enjoyed watching violent pornography and preferred to see men with large penises because he had “a particularly, unusually small penis himself”.
Townsden said a key factor in determining his sentence was whether the attack was premeditated because of sadistic fantasies or due to paranoid delusions as a result of then undiagnosed schizophrenia.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Adam Martin previously told the court the level of planning shown by Donaldson, including looking up news articles about murder, made it unlikely the attack was based on paranoid delusions.
Defence psychiatrist Dr Andrew Ellis said Donaldson told him he received communications from a “messenger” who talked to him through faces on rocks and spotlights in towers, prompting him to carry a weapon at all times for self-defence.
In delivering his sentence, Townsden said he was satisfied on the balance of probabilities there was a causal connection between Donaldson’s persecutory delusions and the offence.
Though he accepted there was planning involved in arranging a sexual encounter, Townsden said he was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt there was planning involved in the attack and any evidence of Donaldson’s preparedness to defend himself was causally linked to his delusional belief system.
Townsden reduced Donaldson’s overall sentence by 25 per cent after determining his early guilty plea, hardship in custody and lack of previous criminal record qualified as special circumstances.
Donaldson was sentenced to nine years in prison to begin on the date of his arrest on February 25, 2021, and expiring on February 24, 2030, with a non-parole period of six years.
He will be eligible for parole on February 24, 2027.
