Kalumburu man sentenced over brutal bashing, indecent assault of remote community school teacher

A 24-year-old Kalumburu man who attacked and indecently assaulted a local teacher leaving her with bleeding on the brain and facial paralysis has been sentenced to three years in prison and is eligible for parole. Sentenced on July 7 in Broome District Court via video link to Kununurra, the court heard French in December 2020 attacked the woman while she was walking her dog in the community. French was walking in the opposite direction to the victim and they said hello as they passed one another. French then turned around to follow the victim, with the victim clutching her keys in anticipation of having to use it as a weapon. French, who had been drinking for a couple of days beforehand, then punched the woman in the right side of the head from behind causing her to fall to the ground. French then continued to punch the woman several times while she was on the ground until she was unconscious. French then put his hand underneath the victim’s underwear and indecently assaulted her. Then, afraid the victim would be seen by member of the public, French dragged the unconscious victim to the side of the road in an effort to make her harder to see. The victim suffered internal bleeding on the brain, a fractured right cheek bone, multiple fractures to the right and left side of her face, a fractured mandible, a fractured temple bone and lost one of her teeth. After being found by members of the community, the victim was flown via RFDS to Royal Perth Hospital where she stayed in the trauma unit for four days. In her victim impact statement the teacher said the incident had continued to affect her negatively in multiple ways, such as a loss in confidence, a fear of falling over, a sense of embarrassment because she doesn’t look the same as she used to, along with ongoing medical issues. She cited having to deal with bleeding from her ears and flying to and from Perth to have tooth implant surgery as well as having to take STD medication after the indecent assault to ensure she did not catch an STD. It took the victim more than a month to return to work which caused her financial stress. French was sentenced to three years and six months for the assault on the teacher and for a previous suspended prison order which was broken when he assaulted the Kalumburu teacher. Imprisoned since the December 13 2020, French’s prison sentence was backdated until that time making him eligible for parole at the time of sentencing having already served the minimum 21 months to be considered for parole. In sentencing, Magistrate Sara Tovey said French’s “disadvantaged” childhood must be taken into account in sentencing. “I must give full weight to the mitigation because of your childhood and I do,” she said. “I have reduced the sentence I would otherwise give you. “Teachers who are in the regions are entitled to go about their work and community in safety.” When the assault occurred back in 2020, State School Teachers Union president Pat Byrne said the union was assisting the victim with her application to be immediately transferred out of the community. “This is obviously completely unacceptable,” she said. “This is a person who was engaging in normal activity. Our teachers should be entitled to safety both at work and in a community.” Kalumburu, the northernmost settlement in WA, is a tiny community with a population of about 420 people and is not accessible by road during the wet season. Many teachers in the community do not stay there during the school holidays because of the remote location. The State Government has previously been forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on security services to protect the homes of teachers while they lie empty during school holidays. In December 2018, it was revealed the Education Department had contracted a security firm to guard Kalumburu Remote Community School and 12 homes of school teachers and staff during the Christmas holidays at an estimated cost of $330,000 over five years. The department said the contract remained in place to provide security guards over the summer holidays each year while school staff were out of town. Ms Byrne said incidents of violence and attacks on the homes of teachers made it hard to attract staff to remote communities including Kalumburu. She said filling the latest vacancy would be particularly difficult. “It is a factor to be able to encourage teachers to take up positions in remote communities,” she said. “It is an ongoing issue and has been for quite some years. The department tries different strategies to deal with it and some of them are successful but others are not.”