R v Ingrey [2025] NSWDC 367: Mental Health, Institutionalisation and Moral Culpability in Domestic Violence Sentencing

The offender and the victim had been in a domestic relationship and had a young child together.

On 4 March 2024, after the victim said she wanted to end the relationship, the offender kicked her in the knee. She fell and sustained bruising. The offender then obtained a kitchen knife, approached the victim and yelled at her. The victim de-escalated the incident by saying that she would not leave him.

In the early hours of 12 March 2024, the offender woke the victim while positioned on top of her. He grabbed her throat for about 10 seconds while accusing her of signalling to someone outside. He covered her mouth when she screamed. He then grabbed her throat a second time for about 15 seconds, again restricting her breathing. He threatened to hurt her and repeatedly accused her of infidelity. The victim's son was asleep nearby.

The victim left the residence that morning and called 000. Police later arrested the offender. He declined to participate in a recorded interview.

The offending occurred while a provisional ADVO prohibited the offender from contacting the victim. The judgment records that the victim had allowed him to live with her despite the order. That did not remove the legal force of the order or prevent a conviction for its breach.

The defence case was supported by a substantial evidentiary foundation. The material included:

• a psychiatric report from Dr Richard Furst;
• an affidavit from the offender's solicitor;
• the earlier decision in Ingrey v R [2016] NSWCCA 31; and
• a specialist report concerning institutionalisation.

The evidence described a history of severe disadvantage and trauma. The offender had been exposed from a young age to drug use, alcohol abuse, crime and violence. His mother died when he was 13. He reported sexual abuse and repeated assaults, including in juvenile detention. He left school in Year 7, was illiterate and had never held paid employment.

By the time of sentence, he had spent only about 16 months in the community since turning 18.

Dr Furst diagnosed complex post-traumatic stress disorder, substance-use disorder and a personality disorder with borderline and antisocial features. He also considered the effects of opiate withdrawal. The psychiatrist linked the offender's early trauma to emotional and social dysfunction, poor coping skills, angry outbursts, instability, addiction and self-harm.

Importantly, the report did not stop at diagnosis. It addressed the offender's condition at the time of the offences, the relationship between that condition and the offending, the effect of imprisonment, treatment needs, risk and prospects of reintegration. The offender was assessed as presenting a moderate to high risk of reoffending.

The Court assessed each offence separately before determining the aggregate sentence.

The assault occasioning actual bodily harm involved a single kick that caused the victim to fall and suffer bruising. The later production of the knife was treated as a surrounding circumstance, but the Crown did not allege that it formed part of the assault or constituted an aggravating feature of that count.

The stalking or intimidation offence involved repeated threats made after the choking. The threats occurred in the early hours of the morning, near the victim's sleeping son, in circumstances where the victim could reasonably expect them to be carried out.

The choking offence involved two separate applications of pressure to the victim's throat, each restricting her breathing. The offender was positioned on top of her, covered her mouth when she screamed and committed the conduct while a child slept nearby.

Those findings preserved the seriousness of the conduct. The mental health evidence did not cause the Court to minimise what happened.

The most significant part of the judgment appears at [53]–[56].

The Court was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the offender's conduct was intended to control the victim's behaviour. Rather, the Court found that he was suffering from severe anxiety and paranoia and was acting on irrational beliefs: that he was being watched, that he was in danger, that the victim was cheating on him and that she was signalling to another person outside at 4.00 am.

The Court found a direct causal connection between those irrational beliefs and the offending. That connection significantly reduced the offender's moral culpability.

This finding must be understood carefully. An intention to exercise coercive control is not a statutory element of each offence to which the offender pleaded guilty. The absence of a proven controlling purpose did not undo the pleas or remove criminal responsibility. It affected the Court's characterisation of the conduct and its assessment of moral blameworthiness for sentence.

The case therefore illustrates the difference between:

• the mental elements required to establish an offence; and
• the broader assessment of why the offending occurred and how morally culpable the offender was.

Those are related questions, but they are not the same question.

Scotting DCJ expressly recognised the prevalence and seriousness of domestic violence. The sentence had to communicate that similar offending would attract significant punishment.

However, general deterrence may carry less weight where an offender's mental condition makes that person an inappropriate vehicle through which to make an example to others. On the findings made in this case, the offender's deprived background had contributed to complex trauma, personality dysfunction, substance dependence and institutionalisation. His undiagnosed opiate-withdrawal syndrome was accepted as contributing to severe paranoia and anxiety at the time of the offences.

The Court therefore gave less weight to general deterrence and found the offender's moral culpability was substantially reduced.

That approach is consistent with the principle in Bugmy v The Queen [2013] HCA 37: the effects of profound deprivation do not necessarily disappear with age or repeat offending. A deprived background must be given proper weight, although its effect may differ across the purposes of punishment.

The current Judicial Commission of NSW Sentencing Bench Book explains the point in practical terms. A deprived background may reduce moral culpability, but the same features may increase the importance of protecting the community. “Full weight” does not mean identical mitigatory effect in every case.

The Court did not treat the psychiatric evidence as operating in one direction only.

The offender had an extensive criminal history, had spent most of his adult life in custody and was assessed as a moderate to high risk of reoffending. The Court found a real need for specific deterrence and recognised that his continued offending presented a danger to the community.

This is an important feature of the decision. A condition that reduces moral culpability can coexist with an increased need for supervision or protection. Sentencing does not require the Court to choose one proposition and disregard the other.

The final sentence reflected both.

Despite the offender's history and risk assessment, the Court found that he retained some prospects of rehabilitation.

Following his previous release, he had engaged with Community Corrections, sought treatment and remained abstinent for a period. His mental health then markedly deteriorated. The Court accepted that prolonged incarceration would deepen his institutionalisation and make reintegration more difficult.

The Court found special circumstances and set a non-parole period of 1 year and 9 months within a 3-year aggregate sentence. The resulting parole period was longer than the usual statutory proportion. That was not an expression of confidence that risk had disappeared. It was a recognition that the offender required an extended period of structured supervision to manage mental health, addiction and reintegration.

The Court also accepted that custody was more onerous because of the offender's deteriorating mental health and the conditions he had experienced in custody.

R v Ingrey was a sentence following guilty pleas. It was not a defended hearing about whether the prosecution could prove the charges.

It is also a District Court decision. The judgment is a useful and persuasive application of established sentencing principles, but it does not create a new binding rule or a sentencing tariff for choking or other domestic violence offences. The outcome depended on an unusual combination of agreed facts, extensive trauma, documented mental health conditions, severe institutionalisation, a direct causal finding, prior custody, guilty pleas and a detailed treatment and risk picture.

The decision should therefore not be reduced to the proposition that mental illness produces a lower sentence for domestic violence offending. Its proper lesson is narrower: sentencing must remain individualised, evidence-based and attentive to all purposes of punishment.

The discipline in R v Ingrey lies in the Court's refusal to flatten the case into a single narrative.

The offending was serious. Choking carries an obvious potential for catastrophic harm. It occurred twice, in a domestic setting, after threats, near a sleeping child and in breach of an ADVO. Those features required punishment, denunciation and protection.

At the same time, the offender's background and mental condition were not peripheral matters. They were supported by evidence and were directly connected to the irrational beliefs operating at the time. To ignore that evidence would have overstated his moral culpability. To ignore his history and risk would have understated the need for community protection.

The sentence reflects both propositions. It is that balancing exercise—not any single numerical outcome—that gives the decision its broader value.