Influencer challenges rapist Chidi Okwechime in ACT Supreme Court victim impact statement

The woman's mother read her victim impact statement to the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday, when offender Chidi Chike Okwechime, 34, faced a sentence hearing.

Okwechime has been behind bars on remand since June, when his bail was revoked after a jury found him guilty of two counts of sexual intercourse without consent and a choking charge.

Jurors acquitted the Conder construction worker of two further sexual intercourse without consent charges, which arose from the same May 2021 incident in which he was found to have raped the victim.

The attack took place in a Coombs unit occupied by one of Okwechime's friends, who was a patched Comanchero bikie at the time, after the 34-year-old and the victim had partied at nightclubs in Civic.

Okwechime sat in the dock on Tuesday, wearing a grey prison uniform, as the influencer's mother read her victim impact statement to the court on her behalf.

The victim wrote that a piece of her had died on the night in question, when Okwechime, a man "incapable of remorse", launched an attack on her mind and body.

"You stripped me, figuratively and literally," she told Okwechime in the statement.

She described how the ordeal had left her "crippled" by anxiety and battling various issues, including an eating disorder, "severe" post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks and low self-esteem.

"It's just debilitating," the woman told the court. "I feel a constant sense of doom."

The woman likened living with the after-effects of the incident to being "on the run", which was "terrifying and exhausting".

"Living with what you did feels like dying a thousand times over," she told Okwechime.

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The influencer ultimately said Okwechime had humiliated, degraded and "ruined" her.

"Don't let the nice photos fool you, I am broken," she said.

"I feel so tarnished and dirty all the time.

"Was it worth it? Did you get what you wanted?"

The victim's mother and father then made statements of their own, describing how their family had been "broken" by their daughter's ordeal.

Both said they had isolated themselves in the wake of what the woman's mother called a "senseless crime" and a "dehumanising act".

The victim's father called the attack "a heinous and vile crime", lamenting the loss of the "beautiful, vibrant" daughter who had been replaced by a shell of her former self.

"Any human with morals and a conscience wouldn't do this to another human," the man said of the rape.

He ultimately said he prayed that justice would be done.

"Sadly, regardless of the outcome, my daughter is the one who will suffer for life," the man said.

Following the reading of the statements, a prosecutor told the court Okwechime, once described by the victim as "a deranged animal", had been released from jail on parole only two months before the attack.

She said the seriousness of the 34-year-old's latest offences was increased by this, the fact the victim had been injured in the incident, and Okwechime having initially ignored the woman's repeated protests.

"[The victim] said, 'You're killing me', or 'I can't breathe'," and the offender then stopped," the prosecutor said.

Okwechime's barrister, Steven Whybrow, conceded nothing but a full-time jail sentence was appropriate.

He also noted that Okwechime could not be given any discount on his sentence because the offender maintained his innocence and was appealing against the jury's verdicts, arguing they were inconsistent.

Mr Whybrow pushed for some degree of concurrency in Okwechime's sentences for the individual offences, acknowledging there were multiple but saying they were all "part of the same transaction".

Acting Justice Stephen Norrish indicated he would sentence Okwechime, who waved to supporters and gave them a thumbs-up as he was led out of the dock by prison guards, next Tuesday morning.

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