SHE KEPT CRYING… BUT THE A-B:USE ALLEGEDLY CONTINUED..! – SHOCKING NEW DETAILS EMERGE AS A COUPLE HAVE THEIR SENTENCES INCREASED OVER THE R-A:PE OF A TEENAGER.
A Queensland couple who raped a 15-year-old girl at a house party will spend more time behind bars – as harrowing new details were released.
Court of Appeal Justice Thomas Bradley extended the sentences of Christopher Luke Hili and Lee Kathleen Hili on Tuesday, the same day he was appointed as Queensland’s new governor.
He handed down the unanimous appeal judgement a year after Attorney-General Deb Frecklington launched an appeal for their rape sentences to be extended.
The Gold Coast couple were found guilty of two counts of rape, one count of exposing a child to an indecent act and one of exposing a child to an indecent film following a five-day trial in April 2024.
Horrific new details of the case were laid bare when the Court of Appeal handed down its ruling this week.
The court heard that in December 2021, the Hilis had been hosting a gathering at their home attended by the 15-year-old victim and her friend, also 15.
Christopher offered the teens a ‘dirty banana cocktail’, which they took a sip of but didn’t drink because it was ‘really strong’, the Courier Mail reported.
However, the girls did each have a pre-mixed ‘blueberry Cruiser’, which Lee had told them to find in the couple’s downstairs bedroom.
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Christopher Luke Hili and Lee Kathleen Hili (above) have been resentenced to longer jail terms
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Hili and his wife Lee (above) were found guilty of raping a 15-year-old girl in April 2024
The court heard that Christopher also later gave the teens a joint, which made the victim’s friend sick.
An adult at the party had tried to take the girls away from the couple but the victim’s friend recalled Lee ‘insisting we could stay’ because she ‘was meant to be doing our nails the next morning’.
The victim found herself alone with the couple in their bedroom while feeling dizzy from the alcohol and cannabis.
She had gone downstairs with the Hilis under the impression she would be staying in a separate bedroom.
The prosecutor said she was ‘unable to resist the respondents’ and was ‘blacking out’ while being assaulted.
‘She did what she was told to do,’ the prosecutor said.
Lee asked the victim her age, if she was bisexual, if she was a virgin and if she had a boyfriend.
The 15-year-old told: ‘I sat down there and then … they started taking my clothes off and I didn’t really know what to do because I was feeling really sick and my head was spinning and then I blanked out.’
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The couple (above) were already eligible for parole when the new Queensland Governor ruled their jail terms were too short
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‘They raped her,’ the prosecutor said.
‘(Christopher Hili) started taking her clothes off. He was rubbing her arm and lifted her shirt up before (the victim) blanked out.’
They continued with the assault when the girl woke up, crying and panicking.
Lee told the teen to ‘be quiet’, before she lost consciousness again.
Christopher was sentenced to seven years behind bars but had been eligible for parole since March.
His wife was sentenced to six years jail and has been eligible for parole for almost a year.
President of the Court of Appeal Justice Debra Mullins and Justices Bradley and Melanie Hindman on Tuesday recommended the jail term be extended.
‘Their sexual offending was opportunistic, but nonetheless deliberate and predatory,’ Justice Bradley said.
He noted that their previous sentences were ‘more lenient than the sentences imposed in other cases for objectively less serious offending’.
‘The denunciative effect of each head sentence was undermined by the significantly advanced parole eligibility date,’ Justice Bradley said.
‘(Chris Hili’s) offending was aggravated in a way that suggests the protection of the complainant, other children, and the public, as well as his just punishment, required a sentence with a period in actual custody not shorter than the usual 50 per cent for an offender convicted after a trial.’
Justice Bradley described the error of the couple’s sentencing to be in a ‘rare category’.
Christopher was resentenced to eight years and won’t be eligible for parole until April 2028.
Lee was resentenced to seven years but could be free as early as April next year.
The court also dismissed the couple’s appeals against the jury’s guilty verdict.
