"Since this happened to me, I feel completely broken," the victim of a serial family violence abuser said, expressing the life-altering effects of being brutally and senselessly raped.
"You destroyed my self-worth and any self-love I had left."
Alan John Matas, her perpetrator and on-and-off partner, faced the ACT Supreme Court on Wednesday after previously admitting to 25 family violence offences.
His charges include 11 counts of sexual assault without consent, several counts of assault, and single counts of choking, capturing intimate visual data and non-consensual distribution of intimate images.
These mostly relate to a protracted sexual assault that was filmed last year and began when the victim was unconscious.
'I do not want anything from you'
The victim's obvious pain, "repeated pleas for the offender to stop", crying and numerous escape attempts were met by what can only be described as a complete void of human empathy.
In sobering words, she told the 37-year-old man she didn't want an apology. One couldn't fix the damage he had caused.
"I do not want anything from you, I just hope one day you actually understand what you have done and exactly how much you have hurt me," she said in her statement for the court.
"This pain and heartbreak is not something I would wish upon anyone. Not even you."
The victim has given express consent to be identifiable through the media reporting of Matas' name.
"I do not understand how someone who was supposed to love you can do such evil things to you," she said, detailing a relationship marred by control and abuse.
'Extraordinarily manipulative'
It's not Matas' second, third or even fourth time before territory courts for offending against an intimate partner in the last few years.
He not only committed his latest crimes while on bail for several other family violence charges, but did so just a few days after telling a court he was determined to change his ways.
A magistrate rejected the "prolific" family violence offender's reform promise and tears at that time, describing him as "extraordinarily manipulative".
"I didn't believe a word of Mr Matas' evidence," magistrate James Stewart said last year.
'The destruction of her dignity'
Agreed facts tendered to the court detail how Matas recorded his latest assault, said to have lasted about 25 minutes, using the drug-affected and initially unconscious victim's phone.
The footage captured Matas raping the victim in a number of ways as he repeatedly verbally abused her, slapped her and violently grabbed her by the hair.
For a portion of time, he painfully handcuffed her, and later sprayed her face with lemon juice and punched her in the ribs.
As she cried and pled for him to stop, Matas responded: "If you're gonna do this to me I might as well go out and f--- all these bitches."
In written submissions to the court, prosecutor James Melloy said videos of the assault "make plain the significant suffering and humiliation of the victim at the hands of the offender".
"The offender treated the victim as if she were an object rather than a human being," Mr Melloy said.
"It involved the destruction of her dignity."
Following his arrest, Matas called the victim from Canberra's prison and told her: "Can you f---ing go and do something about all this shit please ... Go and tell the truth please."
'Self-serving' evidence
On Wednesday, the man struggled to clearly answer questions about his crimes, upbringing and even what his understanding of physically assaulting a partner meant.
And while Matas could recall what drugs he had consumed and video recording on the day in question, he offered no detail about the assault.
"Your memory is quite good up until the point where you start committing these offences and then you say you have an extremely limited recollection," Mr Melloy said in cross-examination.
Matas admitted drugs were a prominent factor in his repeated family violence offending.
Despite this, the court heard he had not undertaken any significant rehabilitation programs, either for drugs or family violence, outside of jail.
Mr Melloy said the "self-serving" man had previously lied about enrolling in, and doing inductions for, rehabilitation programs "to mislead the court".
Asked by defence barrister John Purnell SC on Wednesday what he would say to his victim, Matas responded: "Yeah, just feel like a piece of shit, really."
Last year, mere days before raping the woman, he sat in a witness box and told a court: "I know I've been a shit person."
While the man is in custody, he has spent zero days behind bars solely attributable to these crimes.
Upon remanding him to re-appear before court in May, Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson told Matas: "You will be getting a significant sentence, these are very serious crimes."
- Support is available for those who may be distressed. Phone Lifeline 13 11 14; MensLine 1300 789 978; 1800-RESPECT 1800 737 732.Canberra Rape Crisis Centre 6247 2525.
