An appeals court has not been persuaded by a former NSW prison guard that abused female detainees sexually that his conviction was an injustice.
Wayne Gregory Astill was found guilty in March 2023 of raping and indecently assaulting nine women while he was a guard at the Dillwynia Correctional Centre in Sydney’s west.
He was given a maximum term of 23 years in prison.
Astill filed an appeal to overturn the conviction and sentence, but it was denied by a panel of Supreme Court justices on Monday.
Astill, who is currently in his late 60s, will be imprisoned for at least 15 years and 4 months for misusing his authority to perpetrate crimes over a number of years, until his suspension in 2019.
In their appeal bid, Astill’s attorneys claimed that a jury instruction regarding his inclination to behave a specific manner towards female prisoners during his 2023 trial had led to a miscarriage of justice.
Crown prosecutors used Astill’s preferential treatment of certain prisoners and his sexually suggestive remarks to them as evidence of tendency.
The judges did concur, nevertheless, that it would have unnecessarily complicated the jury’s duty by prohibiting the use of an inmate’s testimony to support a trend with regard to additional complaints made by the same person.
Additionally, Astill’s attorneys contended that his minimum and maximum punishments were obviously disproportionate.
But the appeals panel said that even though the sentence was “stern,” it was appropriate.
In the ruling, Justice Richard Button said that Astill “exploited the vulnerability of the victims in a deliberate, repetitive and systematic way in respect of which he showed no remorse.”
