Former NRL star Brett John Seymour has escaped jail time after pleading guilty to a string of domestic violence offences on the Darling Downs.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old disgraced ex-rugby league player appeared before Toowoomba District Court on Thursday after pleading guilty in May to three counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and one count of common assault.<\/p>\n
All charges related to domestic violence.<\/p>\n
Seymour played for the Brisbane Broncos, the Cronulla Sharks and the New Zealand Warriors during his NRL career from 2002 to 2011.<\/p>\n
The court was told Seymour’s career was marred by alcohol abuse, which resulted in him being fired from certain clubs before relocating to the UK to coach.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Brett Seymour was granted immediate parole. (ABC News: Brandon Long)<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Peter Blake-Segovia told the court on Thursday Seymour had assaulted a woman on numerous occasions from October to December in 2022.<\/p>\n
Mr Blake-Segovia said the offending would mostly occur after arguments about money, where Seymour would get angry when the woman would not give him any money to gamble.<\/p>\n
On one occasion, Seymour had pushed the woman onto the ground, knelt on her back and pressed his knee to pin her down, the court was told.<\/p>\n
Mr Blake-Segovia said the “most serious offending” occurred on Boxing Day 2022 when Seymour punched the woman with an open fist in the eye, leaving her with a severe bruise.<\/p>\n
The court was told he later tried to claim the woman had been hit in the face with a cricket ball during a backyard game.<\/p>\n
Mr Blake-Segovia said Seymour would also verbally abuse the woman, repeatedly calling her names including “mutt” and “ugly”.<\/p>\n
Seymour faces ‘crossroads in life’<\/p>\n
Seymour’s defence barrister, Daniel Boddice, said his client had “taken as many steps as he can to rehabilitate himself” since being charged in July 2023.<\/p>\n
“[There is a] distinction between where he was in that period of his life and where he is now,” Mr Boddice said.<\/p>\n
“He’s not burdened in the acute sense by the addictions he once was, and he can now reflect insightfully on his behaviour.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Brett Seymour leaves Toowoomba District Court after his sentencing.\u00a0 (ABC News: Brandon Long)<\/p>\n
Mr Boddice said his client had struggled with alcohol and drug abuse and gambling since he left his NRL career.<\/p>\n
He said his mental health declined after he was “left in a position of no identity and no money”.<\/p>\n
But prosecutor Mr Blake-Segovia disputed Seymour was at “a crossroads in his life” given he had previously been sentenced in court for separated domestic violence-related offences.<\/p>\n
“He’s been at this crossroads before, and he went down the wrong path,” Mr Blake-Segovia said.<\/p>\n
“This wasn’t a one-off; it’s not an isolated single incident.”‘A major problem’<\/p>\n
During his sentencing remarks, Judge Craig Chowdhury said he was “sick and tired” of seeing domestic violence offending in the community.<\/p>\n
“This is one of these really difficult cases the court gets all the time, none of these cases are easy,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s just shocking how widespread and serious domestic violence has got.<\/p>\n
“There’s a major problem in society with domestic violence and it’s getting worse.”<\/p>\n
Judge Chowdhury ordered Seymour serve a three-year sentence, with immediate parole and a conviction was recorded.<\/p>\n
Seymour was also ordered to pay $5,000 to the complainant within six months.<\/p>\n
Judge Chowdhury said while Seymour had made “extensive efforts” in his rehabilitation, “it’s a shame” he didn’t learn from his past experiences with court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NRL star Brett John Seymour has escaped jail time after pleading guilty to a string of domestic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,76823,76824,761,762,158,85,21098],"class_list":["post-107097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brett-john-seymour","tag-domestic-violence-charges","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports","tag-toowoomba-district-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}