Four-year jail sentence for Tullibigeal sexual assault

Wagga Wagga Courthouse. Photo: Michelle Kroll.

CONTENT WARNING: This article includes details of a rape.

A man who pled guilty in Wagga court to three counts of sexual intercourse without consent regarding an offence that occurred in 2021 has been sentenced to four years and six months in prison.

Matthew Widdows, 26, was handed a non-parole period of two years and eight months, which will expire on 28 June 2027. District Court Judge Gordon Lerve recommended he be released on parole on that date.

According to the published court decision on the sentencing, Widdows committed the offences against a woman in the early hours of Sunday 16 May 2021 in Tullibigeal, a small Riverina town two and half hours north of Wagga.

The previous night, he was at the Mayfield Hotel in Tullibigeal when the victim and two of her friends came to drink after watching an AFL game between Tullibigeal and Lake Cargelligo that day. The victim knew Widdows as a mutual acquaintance, but she had never spoken to him and she did not speak to him at the pub.

When the Mayfield Hotel closed at 12:30 am, Widdows accompanied the victim and one of her friends to a party.

After the party, the offender suggested the victim and her friend follow him back to town. The offender pulled up his utility next to her friend after she arrived at her house and said words to the effect of, “Are you going to invite me in?” through his car window. The offender, victim and her friend all went inside the friend’s house, with the offender taking cans of a premixed alcoholic UDL drink with him.

The published decision then states Widdows engaged in sexual activity with the victim, acts to which the victim did not consent.

Judge Lerve said Widdows did not consider whether or not the victim was consenting but nevertheless proceeded with the acts. He concluded “there was some degree of persistence by the offender”.

Widdows was given less than the maximum sentence for these types of offences – 14 years’ imprisonment – as the judge considered factors such as his young age, that this was his first time in custody and his need for assistance in reintegration into the community.

The published judgement stated that Widdows was a father of two who had completed an apprenticeship, worked as a farmhand and subsequently obtained employment as a stock and station agent, which he described as his “dream job”.