A serial rapist who left a woman unrecognisable after bashing her head on a garden bed will spend up to four more years in prison for the sex attack.
Robert Barry, 61, has admitted to grabbing a woman from behind and raping her at Traralgon, in Victoria's Gippsland region, before rendering her unconscious.
He managed to get away with the crime for almost 40 years, and relocated to Western Australia where he continued on a path of sexual violence.
But advancements in DNA testing eventually connected him to the 1984 rape.
He was aged 22 when he randomly attacked the 24-year-old woman as she was standing under a tree.
She had just left her friends at a bar and was walking near a gymnasium and squash centre, when Barry started running towards her on the grass.
He stopped and started looking around, as the woman waited under the tree for Barry to leave.
But he grabbed her from behind, put his hand over her mouth and dragged her into the garden area where he raped her.
"Don't look at me," he told her.
The woman struggled and tried to escape, but Barry repeatedly bashed head against a wooden sleeper on the garden bed, rendering her unconscious.
When she came to, she ran to a house and police were called.
Barry was not caught initially and moved to WA in the early 1990s, where he continued to commit violent sex offences.
He grabbed a 17-year-old girl from behind, threatened her with a knife and raped her in 1991.
In 1993, he grabbed a 15-year-old girl around the neck and dragged her into nearby toilets where he raped her.
Barry was extradited from WA in 2019, where he is serving a 12-year sentence for those attacks, to face justice in Victoria.
He appeared at Melbourne's County Court by video link from prison on Friday, where his sentence was increased by four years.
"Such offending strikes at the most basic values of a civilised society where people should feel safe on our streets and women should not feel such unprovoked brutality," Judge Nola Karapanagiotidis said.
The impact of the rape has been "far-reaching and debilitating", the victim told the court in a statement.
"The worst thing is it will never go away, but I am determined to live my life," she said.
Judge Karapanagiotidis said the significant violence around the rape left the woman "so injured as to be unrecognisable".
"She sustained black eyes, one of which was swollen closed, she had cuts around her mouth and found it hard to speak, her body was badly bruised," she said.
"Your offending ... was terrifying, degrading and an invasion of bodily integrity."
She was concerned Barry had not undertaken any sex offender programs in the six years he'd spent in prison, and that there was no explanation for the rape other than he was intoxicated.
His 12-year WA prison term was increased to 16 and his minimum term increased by two years and three months, to 12 years and three months.
Barry will be registered as a sex offender for life.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
