A Sydney man who murdered his girlfriend's toddler derived "perverse pleasure" from the pain she suffered when he burnt "smileys" into her with a cigarette lighter, a judge has said when jailing him for at least 33 years.
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Mohammed Khazma stared at the floor, walls and ceiling of the NSW Supreme Court on Friday as Justice Elizabeth Fullerton jailed him for a maximum term of 44 years for killing the two-year-old girl in December 2016.
The 25-year-old continues to deny the murder and has shown no remorse.
Khazma unleashed escalating and gratuitous violence on the toddler after meeting her mother on Facebook and moving into a Sydney granny flat with the pair in the weeks before the child's death.
"The fatal assaults appear to be the result of his uncontrolled rage and a complete lack of appreciation for the vulnerability of the child," Justice Fullerton said, noting he shook the girl when she didn't regain consciousness.
The toddler's post-mortem identified 114 injuries including retinal haemorrhages in both eyes, bleeding inside her skull, 45 separate sites of bruising and 28 human bite marks on her shoulders, arms, legs and buttocks.
The judge was satisfied Khazma was responsible for most of them, including many of the bites and the majority of bruising, consistent with the mother's evidence at trial that her boyfriend punched and hit the child.
The mother said her back was turned when he slapped the two-year-old to the floor, knocking her unconscious.
The toddler turned "a brownish purple colour" and vomited black liquid, she told the court.
She said Khazma left burns on the girl's body with the top part of a cigarette lighter, including her genital region, which he called "smileys" because of the marks left behind.
The judge on Friday said: "He inflicted those injuries wantonly and repeatedly deriving some perverse pleasure from the pain the child would inevitably have suffered when she was burnt and for hours, perhaps even days, afterwards."
Khazma was found guilty of murder in March after a jury rejected his claim the child's mother was the culprit.
He was also found guilty of two counts of assault causing actual bodily harm by burning the toddler with the lighter and slamming her head into a wall in the lead-up to her death.
The mother was originally charged with murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis she failed to remove the girl from Khazma's abuse, failed to protect her and failed to get medical help. She's already served her jail time.
Justice Fullerton said the girl was emotionally and physically debilitated by her many injuries and "not simply vulnerable and defenceless because of her age and her dependence on adults for safety and protection".
"She was without any agency of her own or capacity to defend herself from the two adults who were, in different ways, ultimately criminally responsible for her death," the judge said.
She was unable to make "any realistic assessment" of Khazma's rehabilitation prospects as he refuses to take responsibility for murdering the toddler or inflicting any of her injuries.
Khazma's sentence was backdated meaning he'll first be eligible for release in December 2049.
Australian Associated Press
