Serial rapist Wei Feng jailed for 14 years for attacks on four women

A serial rapist has been jailed for 14 years for violently assaulting four women he lured to his car.

Wei Feng separately attacked three sex workers in St Kilda and also raped a woman he imprisoned in his car in Sunshine, between 2014 and 2017.

Feng sexually assaulted two of the sex workers, in 2014 and 2016, after he asked them to get into his grey Suzuki Swift, drove them to nearby Elwood and attacked them when they refused to comply with his sexual demands.

He tried to do the same to a third sex worker in 2017 but instead put a handcuff on her while she was leaning against his car, and then accelerated, dragging the woman along the street. She suffered leg injuries that required surgery, the County Court heard on Monday.

Also in 2017, Feng was driving in Sunshine when he saw a young woman walking, called her over to his car to ask for a cigarette, and then pulled her into his car and locked the doors.

He drove the woman to a secluded spot and repeatedly threatened and slapped her, choked and raped her. She managed to escape and waved down two cyclists, judge Frank Gucciardo said.

Feng, 50, was last year found guilty by a jury on three charges of rape, two of sexual assault, two of assault with intent to commit sexual assault, false imprisonment and other charges. He was acquitted of charges related to a fifth woman.

The victims had experienced significant trauma in the years since, the judge said, including physical injuries, mental health problems, constant fear, isolation and nightmares.

One woman could now only sleep seated upright, while another had considered suicide and told the court at an earlier hearing: “I feel like I lost myself and I won’t ever be the same.”

Gucciardo on Monday jailed Feng for at least 10 years before he is eligible for parole, and found he had repeatedly targeted and attacked vulnerable women and humiliated them to satisfy his “vile whims”. His attacks included verbal and physical abuse when the women did not do what he wanted, and were carried out with terrifying anger.

“Your offending was particularly egregious, contumacious and appalling,” the judge told him. “Over a period spanning a number of years you engaged in conduct that can be described as not only inexplicable, but vicious, cowardly and revolting.

“You treated these women with utter contempt. You violated their bodily integrity. You treated them as objects only fit for your perverted and abhorrent sexual wishes.”

Feng, a former restaurant worker and bakery worker, previously told the court his offending came at a time when he was unemployed and having relationship problems with his wife. Gucciardo said those excuses did not offer explanation or justification, and he found Feng had not shown “any scintilla” of remorse or regret.

Feng previously wrote a letter to the court, but the judge found it was self-serving and portrayed him as the victim of an injustice.

However, the judge acknowledged Feng’s concern for the welfare of his wife and daughter. Feng has prior convictions for assault and resisting arrest and Gucciardo rated his prospects for rehabilitation as “very bleak”.

He has been in custody since his arrest in March 2017, but the judge said Feng was the architect of the delays in his case, as he repeatedly sacked lawyers, which created delays for the justice system and his victims.

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