A magistrate has warned that intergenerational family violence "infects our community", while sentencing a man who kept bashing his partner with a baseball bat even after the weapon split in two.
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A young man came before Magistrate Bernadette Boss on Friday for what prosecutors described as a "brutal and cowardly" attack on his partner outside his home earlier this year.
Josh Windolf, 20, got in an argument with the woman, before picking up a baseball bat and attacking her with it.
The bat broke in half on the woman's elbow, before she damaged his car.
He used one half of the broken bat to continue the assault, striking her in the head with it until she fell to the floor. Windolf then kicked her in the stomach.
The woman was left covered in blood, and told a taxi driver she thought she was going to die.
Dr Boss warned the young man that she needed to send a message to him and the community through her sentencing that family violence was a "dramatically serious matter".
"Family violence in particular is a matter that infects our community. If it becomes endemic, it can become intergenerational," she said.
"Family violence has a tendency to undermine our most precious relationships, it has a tendency to undermine the cohesion of the community."
Prosecutor James Walker urged the court to sentence Windolf to a further term of full-time imprisonment, on top of the three months and 12 days he had already served.
Mr Walker described the attack as a serious breach of trust, and argued the attacker had showed an utter lack of remorse.
He said Windolf had tried to blame the victim when interviewed by the author of a pre-sentence report, something he described as "truly disturbing".
"The only appropriate penalty, in my respectful submission, is a further period of full-time imprisonment."
Windolf's defence told the court that the relationship had been dysfunctional, and that the defendant's time in the Alexander Maconochie Centre, his first stint, had been a "significant experience".
His youth and prospects for rehabilitation were important factors in sentencing, the defence said.
Dr Boss sentenced him to roughly eight months imprisonment, a term that began in June will end in February, when he will be placed on a two-year good behaviour order.
"You were in an intimate relationship of trust with another human being," she said.
"You violated that trust in the most serious way."
