Dexley Bule Meme, 30, from Vanuatu, was found guilty by a jury in the County Court of rape and abducting a person for a sexual purpose.
The court heard Bule Meme had come across the young woman lying drunk and unconscious on the front lawn of a Shepparton house that he was driving past at 11.30pm at night on August 10, 2024.
He picked her up, put her in his car and drove off.
Some time in the next 45 minutes he raped her before leaving her alone next to the car he was driving in Poplar Ave.
Neighbours reported hearing the victim screaming, and she was found by a passer-by on the ground next to the car.
Bule Meme went to an uncle’s house at 3am and told them the car had broken down.
He was not found by police until two months later in Leeton, NSW.
In sentencing Bule Meme, Judge Geoff Chettle said Bule Meme lied in his police interview when he told police he had been gambling at a Shepparton hotel until 3am and when he had driven home he had seen the woman lying on the ground and had stopped to help her, driving off with her to take her home.
“You intended to have sex with her, even though you knew she was totally intoxicated and incapable of consenting to sex,” he said.
Judge Chettle said it was clear that the victim had been “significantly affected” by his crime and now had difficulty leaving her house, was scared all the time, had sleepless nights and had difficulty trusting anyone.
Judge Chettle said Bule Meme was born on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, and had moved to Australia for work as a fruit picker in 2020.
He had been living and working in the Shepparton area at the time of the rape.
The judge noted Bule Meme did not have any other criminal history, and had come from an “impoverished background” in Vanuatu, but said while he took this into account in a general sense it “does not explain why you were picking up and raping women at night in Shepparton”.
Judge Chettle noted that Bule Meme’s time in custody would be more burdensome on him because of the language barrier, and the fact he was isolated from family in Vanuatu.
He also said Bule Meme would “in all probability” would be deported after completing his jail sentence.
Bule Meme was sentenced to 11 years in prison, with a non-parole period of seven-and-a-half years.
The 546 days he was spent in pre-sentence detention counts as time already served.
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