A 74-year-old man who raped and sexually abused his daughter in Sydney so horrendously she developed thousands of identities to cope with her father's actions has been sentenced to 45 years prison by a Sydney court.
Richard Haynes was extradited from the United Kingdom in February 2017 to face 25 of charges of rape, buggery and indecent assault against his daughter, Jeni, in the 1970s and 1980s.
She was aged between four and 11 at the time and was later diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder.
Haynes, dressed in green, stared blankly at Judge Sarah Huggett, as she read to the court the horrific details of his offences.
The court heard the offences started in 1974 when the family was living in the Sydney suburb of Greenacre.
They continued after the family had moved to Dulwich Hill, in Sydney’s inner west.
Jeni Haynes was regularly, and often violently, sexually assaulted between the ages of 4 and 11, before the family moved back to the UK in April 1981.
She laughed and smiled with friends and supporters in the court before her father arrived.
Later, she sat just metres away from Haynes and wiped away tears as Judge Huggett spent 90 minutes detailing the 25 offences to which Haynes had pleaded guilty.
Jeni testified at a sentencing hearing earlier this year, saying she had developed dissociative identity disorder, and had around 2,500 different personalities.
The prosecutor said at the time that it was a “sophisticated coping mechanism”.
It was only after she had begun her testimony, that her father pleaded guilty.
Judge Huggett said the sentence took into account Haynes’s guilty plea, and his age and ill-health.
The sentence was backdated to 5 January 2017, with a non-parole period of 33 years.
