Two years into her relationship with Benjamin Morris, 19-year-old Lucy was running barefoot in the dark, hiding in bushes to escape him.
The police were called that night, but it was just the beginning of a three-year campaign of coercive control at the hands of serial offender Benjamin James Morris.
Morris pleaded guilty to 19 offences committed between June 2020 and August 2023, including eight counts of intimidation, seven counts of contravening a caught domestic violence order, two counts of threats to kill and three counts of trying to influence a witness.
A District Court judge at first sentenced Morris to 16 years in jail, with 11 years non-parole, in what is believed to be one of the most severe sentences handed down for non-physically violent domestic violence offending.
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Summarized version
Morris pleaded guilty to 19 offences committed between June 2020 and August 2023, including eight counts of intimidation, seven counts of contravening a caught domestic violence order.
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Headline check
Headline as published: 'Fear and anger' after domestic violence offender's sentence slashed
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The headline puts “Fear and anger” in quotation marks. Nobody says those words anywhere in the report.
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The article, shortened and in plain language
Two years into her relationship with Benjamin Morris, 19-year-old Lucy was running barefoot in the dark, hiding in bushes to escape him.
Morris pulled up outside the house and told her sister that if Lucy did not agree to leave with him, he would murder them all with the gun he kept in the boot of his car.
The police were called that night, but it was just the beginning of a three-year campaign of coercive control at the hands of serial offender Benjamin James Morris.
His case pre-dated the new coercive control laws introduced by the NSW government in mid-2024, but he was charged with a set of other domestic violence offences.
Morris pleaded guilty to 19 offences committed between June 2020 and August 2023, including eight counts of intimidation, seven counts of contravening a caught domestic violence order, two counts of threats to kill and three counts of trying to influence a witness.
In July 2022, he sent her 249 messages in a 24-hour period, which accounted for another single count of breaching an ADVO.
In one of those messages, Morris threatened to burn her and her family alive, referencing the murder of Hannah Clarke and her children by her ex-partner in Queensland in 2020.
A District Court judge at first sentenced Morris to 16 years in jail, with 11 years non-parole, in what is believed to be one of the most severe sentences handed down for non-physically violent domestic violence offending.
NSW Police Superintendent Ben Morris, Acting Commander of the Domestic and Family Violence Command, said the case highlighted the importance of enforcing ADVOs and prosecuting offenders who breach them.
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