‘Incurable’ rapist gets 24 years more

Serial rapist Paul Stephen Keating may spend the rest of his life behind bars after being jailed yesterday for 24 years without parole for a horrific sex attack on a female prison worker.

Chief District Court Judge Antoinette Kennedy added the long jail term to indefinite and life sentences already being served by the incurable rapist.

Keating will be 70 when his 24-year jail term expires but will then remain in custody at the Governor’s pleasure.

“I would not expect you (Keating) to ever be released until you are too physically infirm to be a risk to anyone,” Judge Kennedy said.

The 46-year-old was heavily guarded as he heard details of his knife-point attack at Bunbury Regional Prison on March 16.

Prosecutor Linda Petrusa said Keating was a sadistic narcissist who used his position as a cleaner in the prison’s education centre to isolate the victim in a premeditated attack.

Ms Petrusa said Keating punched the woman and held a kitchen knife to her throat, threatening to kill and disembowel her when she tried to fight him off. He again threatened to cut her throat when another prison officer saw him holding the victim.

Keating dragged the victim into a stationery cupboard and doused both the woman and himself with flammable aerosol spray. Despite efforts by the victim and other prison officers to negotiate, Keating held her hostage and repeatedly and violently raped her over six hours.

Ms Petrusa said that, after surrendering to police, Keating admitted the attack on a woman who had been the “nicest” to him and had supported him was cruel and inhumane.

He claimed he had “destroyed her life”. “He told police he fully intended to kill the complainant but in the end he couldn’t do it and let her go,” Ms Petrusa said.

Keating, whose mother tried to drown him when he was five, told police he had a history of falling in love with women, idolising and fantasising about them before turning and wanting to destroy them.

“He believed this stemmed from his mother abandoning him when he was a child,” Ms Petrusa said.

She said Keating’s offences were almost identical to his sex attack on another female prison worker at Casuarina Prison in 1992.

Concerted efforts to rehabilitate Keating had failed.

“The extent of rehabilitation of this man is zero,” she said.

“Analogies have been drawn with animals and this offender is found wanting in that comparison.”