A Brazilian man who drugged a woman by slipping MDMA into her wine before attempting to rape her at his inner Sydney apartment has been jailed for 4½ years.
Romolo Giuseppe Mercuri De Figueiredo told the woman that he had put “love” in her drink before she passed out and woke to find her pants and clothes pulled down.
He on Friday learnt his fate as he was sentenced in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court, watching on from prison via a videolink on an iPad.
The court was told that Mercuri De Figueiredo slipped the drug into her drink after she agreed to come to his Waterloo apartment in April 2020 to discuss renting a room.
Mercuri De Figueiredo had attempted to claim that they were on a date and the woman had mistakenly consumed a drink spiked with MDMA that he had made for himself while he was out of the room.
However, Judge Phillip Mahony rejected his version of events and noted that he had failed to show remorse.
Following a judge-alone trial, Mercuri De Figueiredo was in August last year found guilty of administering an intoxicating substance with intent to commit an indictable offence, attempted sexual intercourse without consent and intentional sexual toxjmtzywuching without consent.
The court was told that Mercuri De Figueiredo began communicating with the woman via social media in April 2020.
After messaging for five or six days, he began making sexually suggestive comments, including “I’m touching myself”.
During lockdown the woman was experiencing financial difficulties and he offered to rent her a room in Coogee for $150 a week.
She expressed hesitation but eventually agreed to meet him at the apartment where he offered her a glass of wine.
As they began drinking, he offered to let her live in his place at Waterloo house for free.
During her evidence, the woman said she began feeling unwell and as if her body had “bubbles” all over it.
When she looked in a mirror she saw that her pupils were dilated and the size of “grapes”.
She confronted him, demanding: “Tell me which drug you put in the drink. Tell me which drug you put in it.”
According to the woman’s evidence, he responded by saying: “I put in it love.”
She gave further evidence that he admitted to putting MDMA in her drink.
The woman passed out and woke to find her jeans and underwear had been pulled down, her blouse had been pulled up exposing her chest and he had unzipped his jeans as he lay on top of her.
He forced a kiss on her, and he argued at trial that she reciprocated.
However, Judge Mahony said that she was unable to give consent at the time because she had been drugged and accepted the woman’s version of events that she had pushed him away.
“What are you doing?” she told him before going into the bathroom and closing the door to stop him from following her.
“I tried to scream, but I couldn’t because I couldn’t feel my body, I couldn’t feel anything,” she said in her evidence.
After she arrived home, the woman said she vomited and texted two friends before she went to the police several weeks later.
At trial Mercuri De Figueiredo said he put the MDMA into his own glass to “get high and feel good” and that she had mistakenly drunk it.
“Having regard to the whole of the evidence, I find that the accused placed MDMA in the complainant’s drink on the evening of 25 April 2020,” Judge Mahony said.
“I find that the MDMA was placed in her glass of red wine after they arrived at the accused’s apartment, some time after 8pm.”
Judge Mahony also said Mercuri De Figueiredo’s argument that she had drunk the spiked drink, which he had made for himself, was “implausible evidence fabricated to exculpate him from any wrongdoing”.
Judge Mahony took into account Mercuri De Figueiredo had been assaulted while in jail.
He was sentenced to four years and six months in jail with a two-year, three-month non-parole period.
With time served Mercuri De Figueiredo will be eligible for release in August 2023, though he faces being deported back to Brazil.
