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The man convicted of a violent sexual assault in Darwin's northern suburbs has been handed a harsher prison sentence after prosecutors successfully argued his original sentence was inadequate in the NT Court of Criminal Appeal.
Steven Kahu-Leedie, 30, pleaded guilty to two counts of intercourse without consent in August last year, following an incident near Casuarina Beach about a year earlier.
The Northern Territory Supreme Court had previously heard Kahu-Leedie met his victim at a Darwin pub one Friday evening before asking her to go for a drive and assaulting her in a beachside car park.
Kahu-Leedie's victim was left in the unlit car park only partially clothed and bleeding, with internal injuries so severe they would later require stitches and pain-relief medication.
In the initial sentencing, Justice Trevor Riley said Kahu-Leedie's conduct "had a significant and ongoing detrimental impact" on his victim's life.
He was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison with a non-parole period of six years.
Crown prosecutors then appealed against the sentence on the grounds that it was manifestly inadequate.
They argued the judge failed to have sufficient regard for the "extreme nature" of the victim's injuries, that the judge failed to have sufficient regard for the fact that each count of rape related to two forms of intercourse, and failed to impose a sentence that reflected the gravity of the offending.
On the third argument, prosecutors argued the offending was elevated by factors including the Kahu-Leedie's knowledge that the sex was non-consensual, that he disregarded pleas of "don't rape me" and did not use a condom.
"We agree that the offending was elevated by virtue of these factors," the appeal bench wrote in a decision handed down on Friday.
The offender's lawyers argued that the seriousness of the offending was mitigated by several factors, including that it was not prolonged, no weapon was used and there was no gratuitous violence.
But the appeal bench ruled those features could "best be characterised as the absence of further aggravating features of the offending, and the absence of an aggravating feature is not a mitigating feature".
Kahu-Leedie's original sentenced was quashed before an 11-year sentence, backdated to August 2020, was imposed.
He will serve a non-parole period of seven years and nine months.
