A PREDATORY peeping Tom who was caught prying through women's windows and masturbating before he tried to drag a woman pushing a pram into bushland plans to appeal against the severity of his maximum 20-month jail term.
Former abattoir worker Esera Vaini Felise, 22, who targeted four women in Singleton Heights between April and May last year, was expected to launch a severity appeal in Newcastle District Court on Monday, but the matter was adjourned because a Samoan interpreter had not been ordered.
Vaini Felise is eligible for parole on August 8, when he will likely be deported back to Samoa, the court previously heard.
The severity appeal is now listed for June 23, when lawyers for the 22-year-old will attempt to have his jail term reduced.
In February, his lawyers submitted Vaini Felise could be sentenced to time served - which at that point equated to about eight months' jail - but Magistrate Kevin Hockey said the offences were far too serious and sentenced him to a maximum of 20 months, with a non-parole period of 14 months.
According to court documents, a woman was at a home on Wilcox Avenue at Singleton Heights about 7pm on April 4, 2022, when she saw Vaini Felise at her back door committing a sexual act.
Later that month, on the night of April 22, Vaini Felise was spotted peeping into a woman's unit in O'Halloran Avenue at Singleton Heights and returned again two days later to do the same thing.
On April 24 that year, Vaini Felise also exposed himself and masturbated in front of a woman on an underground walkway near Wilcox Avenue.
And then on May 16, Vaini Felise's sexual acts escalated to the point he grabbed and groped a woman pushing her baby in a pram along a walkway off Heather Place.
The woman, 27, said Vaini Felise approached from behind and put his hands down her pants and inside her underwear.
The woman pulled his hands out of her pants, but Vaini Felise grabbed her wrists and started dragging her towards nearby bushes.
She managed to break free of his grasp, but as she was fleeing Vaini Felise pulled out his penis and began waving it around.
"That would have been a horrific experience for a woman with a young child," Magistrate Hockey said in February.
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