Levi Bradley Atkins: More jail time for child sex offender who threatened to kill juror, prosecution witness

A child sex offender has been hit with more jail time for screaming death threats and obscenities at the lead juror at his trial, vowing to murder a prosecution witness while ignoring the judge’s orders to cease his tirade. Levi Bradley Atkins, 38, launched the relentless verbal attack on the foreman of his District Court of WA trial in February, kicking off when the first guilty verdict was declared and continuing through the ensuing four guilty verdicts. “I am going to get you, c... I am going to get you, and then you are going to get got,” he yelled at the foreman. Atkins then turned his vitriol on the public gallery, shouting a vile slur at one of the complainant’s relatives, who testified against him at the trial, telling her: “I am going to murder you, you f...ing dog”. “You did that in defiance of court security,” Judge Craig Astill said on Friday. “You did it in disregard of the authority of the presiding judge. “Your conduct attacked the sense of the security and safety that every juror is entitled to feel when performing this important role.” Judge Astill said the outburst was serious offending, involving “highly offensive” and “highly personal” obscenities that left the entire jury distressed. It wasn’t uncharacteristic for Atkins, coming after “some other disrespectful things that had occurred during the course of the trial”. The judge accepted Atkins was simply reacting to the verdicts, but it was still a direct assault on the integrity of the court system. The threats to the witness, however, were alarming. “I have a genuine concern for her safety,” Judge Astill said. “Even if you do not intend to carry through, and I sincerely hope that you do not ... she would, I would think, have good reason now to live in a constant fear of you.” Judge Astill noted Atkins had “participated in extensive gang-related violence” when he was younger, had a “vast accumulation of offences” and had lied that he was mentally unwell so he avoid trial on six charges of sexual penetration of a child in 2010. That, in his own words, backfired badly, with Atkins spending about five years incarcerated under a custody treatment order. He last worked 15 years ago and his tenure was mostly short-lived, because, again in his own words: “The same thing happened all the time, like in the courtroom”. “You would become significantly emotionally deregulated and abusive towards your bosses ... You described hitting one of your bosses in the head with a piece of wood,” Judge Astill said. “And so perhaps, not surprisingly, after that, you have had some difficulty in securing employment.” He sentenced Atkins to a further two years behind bars, on top of the five years and 10 months he’s already serving for child sexual abuse.