A court has heard "pride and ego" drove an Adelaide man to try to murder his three-year-old daughter and kill himself, rather than face divorce.
WARNING: This story contains details that may cause distress to some readers.
The child's mother today also told the court there was not enough change on the horizon for victims of family violence.
Shaun Preston Mate, 45, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of his then-three-year-old days before his Supreme Court trial was due to begin earlier this year.
Police found Mate and his daughter unresponsive and suffering from hypoxia at their Eden Hills home in July 2020.
The court heard the young girl spent five days in hospital — mostly in intensive care — and took weeks to recover from the injuries.
The girl's mother and Mate's ex-wife — whose identity is suppressed — told the Supreme Court during sentencing submissions she would never forgive Mate for his "confident, calculated and brazen" crime.
"The things I have witnessed are terrifying; the weight of this trauma is heavy and all of it was very unfair and unnecessary," she told the court in a victim impact statement.
"I saw her little body unconscious, tubes and wires coming from everywhere, being flooded with medicines and devices to save her and then watching her struggle back to life.
"This was the most harrowing experience of my life and the fact that this happened because of the cruel actions of her father was sickening."
The girl's mother — who was on maternity leave at the time of the crime — told the court her daughter was "moments away from perishing" and it was only because of her "incidental awakening" that night and the actions of emergency services and health professionals that she survived.
The court heard the young girl had now appeared to have physically recovered from her injuries, but that the psychological impact was still apparent.
The girl's mother told the court her previously "happy and loving child" was now "fragile, completely emotionally shut down" and had lost a lot of confidence.
"I still fear how [Mate] will infiltrate our lives in the future and continue to abuse us," the girl's mother told the court.
"His actions were abhorrent and horrifying and he has nearly destroyed us.
"Shaun's pride and ego had led him to believe [trying to] killing his daughter was preferable to divorce.
"We did not deserve this."
The court heard the family had to sell and move from their "beloved family home" after Mate's "selfish and premeditated actions".
'This case was a near miss'
The court has previously heard Mate's marriage was "falling apart" in the lead-up to the attempted murder and he had become verbally and physically abusive.
It also heard Mate wrote notes to his then-wife and younger daughter that stated his intention to kill.
"[Our daughter] and I will live together forever, and you can consider what life is worth," the court previously heard the note read.
On Wednesday, the victim's mother told the court she feared the day Mate would be released from prison and asked the Supreme Court to impose a lengthy sentence to allow him enough time to rehabilitate, and for her and her children to enjoy the remainder of their childhood "safely and free of Shaun's threat".
She also told the court the whole experience had left her "disillusioned" by the impact of and approach to family violence.
"I see little change on the horizon for them or us."
Mate's lawyer Marie Shaw QC told the court she was still awaiting a psychiatric report, which had been delayed due to COVID and the Adelaide Remand Centre being in lockdown.
She told the court she had "a position" to put in relation to the "reach and comments" made in the mother's victim impact statement, as they did "not necessarily fall within" what was permitted under the Sentencing Act.
The matter returns to court in June.
