An intellectually disabled woman will not go to jail for the false imprisonment and rape of two female victims from Warrnambool after the Court of Appeal ruled such a sentence would be inhumane.
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Judges this week dismissed an appeal from crown prosecutors who argued the community corrections order handed down to Kimberley Cramp, 29, in Wodonga County Court last year was "manifestly inadequate".
Cramp pleaded guilty to the rape of the two Warrnambool victims, also intellectually disabled women, plus false imprisonment and theft. She and partner Alexander Trewin befriended and conned the women into going to their Wodonga home, and held them captive between August 15 and October 12, 2016.
Cramp digitally raped both women, then aged 22 and 26, and told them "don't tell anyone what I've done".
She and Trewin took more than $10,000 from the victims over two months including buying household items such as a suitcase and clothes dryer using their Centrelink benefits.
The Director of Public Prosecutions argued the sentence did not reflect the gravity of the offending or the impact on the victims, it failed to take into account the protection of the community, and gave too much weight to Cramp's disability.
A psychologist report found her cerebral palsy and intellectual disability caused the offending.
Cramp's lawyers said the rapes "appear less than usually terrifying, protracted, painful or unusually degrading" and that the "bizarre circumstances of the offending are not likely to occur again".
Court of Appeal judges Phillip Priest, Richard Niall and Mark Weinberg said the lenient sentence was justified and it would have been "an extraordinarily serious step" to send her to jail.
"It would be inhumane, given her intellectual impairment, to deny the respondent her freedom after the sentencing judge saw fit to release her into the community," they stated.
"The respondent has little or no remorse, but according to the expert evidence that absence of remorse is directly linked to her intellectual incapacities. She does not, however, present any particular danger to the general community as a result of conduct arising from her intellectual deficits."
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