Raped backpacker begged to die

The girlfriend of Hotel Hell torturer Alfio Granata, Jennifer Peaston
(pictured with her lawyer) was herself a victim. Source: News Corp Australia

A DUTCH backpacker held captive by a Melbourne man who brutally raped and assaulted her pleaded to be allowed to die on the last day of her ordeal.

As the 21-year-old victim cut herself in the hotel room she felt she could not leave, Alfio Anthony Granata panicked and called an ambulance, bringing to an end six weeks of violent abuse.

The victim sustained 54 separate injuries as a result of the prolonged attack in November and December 2012.

Her nose was fractured after Granata gabbed her by the hair and smashed her head into his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Mary Peaston’s head.

Granata, 47, had told the victim, who cannot be named, he had killed many times before, and she and his girlfriend would be next. In the Victorian County Court on Monday, Judge Frank Gucciardo sentenced Granata to 17 years in prison, telling the father of three his behaviour was vile and repulsive, and had dehumanised his victim.

“Yours was a brutality which transgressed all community standards of behaviour,” Judge Gucciardo told Granata.

The backpacker had met Granata and Peaston in October 2012 and agreed to go back to their hotel room in Bell Street, Preston, for consensual sex.

Over the following week, she returned to the room frequently, where the three smoked ice together.Early in November, Granata began to suspect the two women were having an affair behind his back and assaulted the victim with a knife.

He scratched an “X” into her forehead and told her she was “marked for death” for betraying him.

In the subsequent weeks, he repeatedly beat her, raped her, stomped on her, and told her she would die.

He threatened to kill her family and said he had connections with security guards at the hotel, and she felt she could not leave.

He forced the two women to lie in a lover’s embrace, photographed them, and told them that was how they would be placed in their grave.

He told them he would take them to a quiet place, like a park, to kill them and they would never be found.

Later, he performed a ritual on the backpacker, putting her photograph in an envelope along with her hair, nail clippings and blood, telling her the act symbolised her being no more.

He said all that would be left of the victim was what was in the envelope.

He forced her to perform oral sex on him and at one point beat her so badly she couldn’t see or eat for days.

The ordeal came to an end on Christmas Day, 2012 when Granata and Peaston fell asleep and the victim stabbed Granata in the shoulder before turning the knife on herself.

After paramedics were called and the victim was in an ambulance, she said to the paramedics: “I am safe, thank you for saving me.” When Granata was interviewed by police, he said the victim was a troublemaker and he had been drugged by her.

Granata pleaded guilty to nine counts of rape, two counts of threatening to kill, one count of threatening to inflict serious injury, one count of inflicting serious injury, and one count of theft, which relates to items he stole from the victim’s hostel room.

Judge Gucciardo sentenced Granata to a non-parole period of 13 years.

Granata has already served 836 days of pre-sentence detention.

Source: news.com.au