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<\/a><\/p>\n1 Related<\/p>\n
A jury found Silvagni digitally raped the woman at his Melbourne home in the early hours of January 14, 2024.<\/p>\n
The woman, who had been in a brief relationship with Silvagni’s friend, was invited to join them all at the house by Silvagni’s girlfriend.<\/p>\n
The four of them chatted for some time before heading separately to bed and the victim had consensual sex with her boyfriend.<\/p>\n
He then had to leave so he organised an Uber and left the property shortly before 2am.<\/p>\n
Silvagni then went to the woman’s room and lied, claiming her boyfriend’s Uber had been cancelled and he would be back upstairs soon.<\/p>\n
But it was Silvagni who went into the dark bedroom a short time later and pretended to be the woman’s boyfriend as he digitally raped her.<\/p>\n
She managed to move away and ask directly if he was Silvagni but he still claimed to be the other man.<\/p>\n
Silvagni then grabbed both of the woman’s hands, pinned her down and digitally raped her a second time while she told him to stop.<\/p>\n
The woman managed to get a hand free and felt his hair, which was longer than her boyfriend’s, and that’s when Silvagni stopped and ran from the room.<\/p>\n
He returned a few minutes later and acted as if nothing had happened, instead asking her if she was OK and requesting a hug before she left.<\/p>\n
In the days that followed, Silvagni fabricated an Uber receipt to make it look like the woman’s boyfriend had left his home after 2.30am.<\/p>\n
Silvagni admitted forging the receipt but said he did so because he panicked after being falsely accused of rape.<\/p>\n
But the jury rejected his story, finding him guilty of the two rape charges on December 5.<\/p>\n
Silvagni had been calculated as he sought to take advantage of the woman’s vulnerability and trust, crown prosecutor Jeremy McWilliams told the court.<\/p>\n
“To deny the reality of her experience, even at that time, in that way, demonstrates … a real lack of empathy, a real sense of entitlement,” he said on Friday.<\/p>\n
Silvagni’s parents Stephen and Jo both shook their heads and muttered to each other as Mr McWilliams made his submissions.<\/p>\n
The couple only came into the courtroom after the victim had finished reading her statement.<\/p>\n
Outside of court, Stephen Silvagni broke down as he indicated his son would appeal the verdict.<\/p>\n
“Our son continues to maintain his innocence and we stand firmly behind him,” Mr Silvagni said.<\/p>\n
“Our goal is to clear his name and bring him home.”<\/p>\n
David Hallowes SC, representing Silvagni, accepted the offending was serious but argued his client was a young man from a loving family with no prior convictions.<\/p>\n
He told the court Silvagni had suffered additional punishment from the extensive media attention, following the suppression over his identity being lifted on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Silvagni should also receive a lighter sentence because his time in custody would be more difficult due to his poor mental health and risk of suicide, Mr Hallowes said.<\/p>\n
Judge Gregory Lyon remanded Silvagni in custody ahead of his sentencing hearing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)<\/p>\n
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028<\/p>\n
Lifeline 13 11 14<\/p>\n
beyondblue 1300 22 4636<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The woman who was raped by Tom Silvagni has confronted her attacker in court, saying his evil actions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-345484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345484","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=345484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}