Warning: distressing content
A “predatory” man who raped a young woman in a nightclub cubicle has admitted filming three different people in their own homes as they stood naked or had sex with their partner.
Aref Pandamooz, 35, was sentenced to seven years jail with a four-year non-parole period in April last year for the rape and aggravated sexual assault in a Sydney nightclub on May 18, 2019.
Court records obtained by news.com.au show he failed to have his conviction overturned for those offences in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal last month.
From prison, he was due to face a NSW District Court hearing into a string of separate charges this week, but changed his plea to guilty at the eleventh hour. Those pleas were to 9 counts of filming a person’s private parts without consent and one count of filming a person in a private act without consent.
According to agreed facts tendered to court, Pandamooz was living in the north-west suburb of Ryde when he illegally filmed two women and one man over 10 incidents spanning April and May 2020.
One woman, who lived near Pandamooz, was filmed 22 times on eight separate nights between 10pm and midnight. On each ocassion, Pandamooz stood outside the woman’s bathroom window and recorded her either taking her clothes off to get into the shower or putting them back on, with the footage capturing her naked.
The Iranian national filmed another woman without her consent as she sat on her bedroom topless and put on a nightie, the facts read.
In a similarly disturbing act committed about 12:30am on April 12, Pandamooz walked onto a front lawn and to a bedroom window on Denistone East in north Sydney and filmed a man having sex with his wife.
Police would not have uncovered the crimes had it not been for his arrest on June 3, 2020, for an unrelated matter. As a result, they seized and searched his mobile phone which held the incriminating evidence.
In the facts, police state Pandamooz preyed on each victim amid their most vulnerable times.
“Given the similar timings of each recorded video, (he) was well aware of the routines of each victim … and recorded each without their consent in circumstances they would reasonably expect privacy,” the facts read.
“(He) caused them all to feel intimidated and fearful for their safety”.
Police alleged officers found videos on Pandamooz’ phone of other young females “in similar situations,” but could not legally prosecute him on those allegations due to the length of time that had passed.
“Police will allege he has built a library of videos for his own sexual gratification, which is of extreme concern to investigators,” the facts read.
“The accused has shown a level of criminality which poses an unacceptable risk to the community.”
As Pandamooz pleaded guilty to 10 counts of filming a person’s private parts or in a private act without consent on Tuesday, a further 10 charges of intentionally recording an intimate image without consent and 10 charges of peeping and prying — relating to the same incidents — were dismissed.
He is due to be sentenced next month.
Five minutes of terror
Pandamooz, who migrated to Australia on a spousal visa after marrying an Australian woman several years ago, has an unenviable criminal record.
Last month, news.com.au revealed he was appealing his conviction for raping a woman in a Sydney nightclub.
The NSW District Court trial heard he met the woman on the dance-floor and led her into a toilet cubicle where he sexually assaulted her over five minutes.
In a moving victim impact statement tendered to court, the woman said there had not been a day since the rape where she has not had to fight.
“How can five minutes on one night change every minute to ever follow? I’ve lost so much time having panic attacks and nightmares, struggling to stay afloat, exhausted by a brain searching for answers,” she wrote.
“I’m just a different version of me, because after the assault I changed … it is hard to articulate the sheer magnitude of how this has affected me, because truthfully there is not a single thing in my life that this crime has not impacted.”
She said she’d felt unsafe in her own body for three years.
“I have tried meditation, cleaning my room, showering over and over and sleeping at friends’ houses,” she wrote.
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“It doesn’t matter where I go, I feel unsafe. These efforts only made me more isolated, like carrying a disease. I’ve spent hundreds of sleepless nights and tens of thousands of dollars on medication and appointments to help avoid them.”
In September, Pandamooz’ lawyer, Tony Yeh, appealed his client’s conviction on the grounds of a miscarriage of justice. He argued the sentencing judge answered a jury question about intoxication and consent in a way that favoured the prosecution, as well as worked on the incorrect assumption Pandamooz was cross-examined on his awareness of the woman’s intoxication.
But a published Supreme Court judgment shows Judge Christine Adamson, Judge Ian Harrison and Judge Richard Weinstein ruled the appeal grounds did not have “any effect on the fairness of the applicant’s trial” and could not “reasonably be supposed to have had any effect on the verdicts returned by the jury” and dismissed the appeal.
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