A sex offender has had two convictions overturned and his jail sentence reduced, after a court found there was "a significant possibility" that he was innocent of committing a violent rape.
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Lawyers for Canberra man Robert Glen Sirl, 49, relied heavily on precedents in the case of Cardinal George Pell, saying the church leader's successful appeal against a number of child sex convictions had "changed the landscape".
Prior to Sirl succeeding in his appeal last week, he was serving a total sentence of 13-and-a-half years behind bars with a non-parole period of eight years.
The sentence was comprised of penalties for maintaining sexual relationships with two underage girls, and for raping a woman with a sharp object and inflicting grievous bodily harm on her.
Sirl appealed against the convictions relating to the woman, who underwent lifesaving surgery after losing up to half of her blood.
The woman said she suffered her injuries in a violent rape committed by Sirl when she visited his cabin at a Canberra caravan park to buy drugs in August 2018.
A jury found Sirl guilty of rape and inflicting grievous bodily harm after a trial last year, and his legal team recently argued those convictions were "unsafe or unreasonable having regard to the evidence".
Sirl's lawyers said he should be acquitted because it was not possible to rule out three alternative scenarios.
These were that the woman had suffered her injuries during consensual sex with Sirl, that someone else had assaulted the woman in the time between her having consensual sex with Sirl and calling an ambulance, or that the woman had inflicted her own injuries.
The ACT Court of Appeal ultimately found that, as in Cardinal Pell's case, the alleged victim's claims and the supporting evidence should not have been enough to secure convictions and jurors should have been left with reasonable doubt.
The appeal judges said that evidence, however credible, could not exclude the rest of the information presented to the jury.
A full bench of the court found that in Sirl's case, the woman's phone records did not align with any of her versions of the alleged rape.
The woman initially said she had been raped during a Tinder date, but later said that was "rubbish" and that she had been "terrified" of what would happen if she named Sirl as her attacker.
"If the [woman] was attacked it is equally consistent that the attack occurred some hours after she went to [Sirl's] cabin thus giving credence to the second hypothesis, namely that the attack occurred during a Tinder date," the appeal judges said in their decision.
"The ultimate conclusion on an examination of the record of the trial is that, quoting from Pell, 'there is a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted'."
The Court of Appeal judges - Justice Michael Elkaim, Acting Justice David Robinson and Acting Justice Robert Crowe - said Sirl's convictions for raping the woman and inflicting grievous bodily harm on her must therefore be set aside.
The court's conclusion did not allow for a retrial, meaning Sirl was acquitted of those two charges.
He was subsequently re-sentenced on the separate charges of maintaining sexual relationships with two underage girls, for which his convictions stand.
The ACT Supreme Court has previously heard Sirl met a 14-year-old girl when she was "couchsurfing". He gave her drugs and a place to live, making her reliant on him, and they had frequent sex without using a condom.
The other underage girl was 15 when Sirl supplied her with methamphetamine in exchange for sex.
Sirl's new total sentence is nine years in jail, with a non-parole period of six years and three months.
With time already served, he will be eligible for release in January 2025.