A court in Cairns has heard details of a violent attack on a man who they lured through the dating app Grindr.
In August Blake Dean Nightingall, a 20-year-old man in Cairns, pleased guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm in company and stealing in an attack that occurred on October 22, 2024.
Nightingall created a profile using photos of himself at 15 years of age, and talked online with the man before arranging to meet his at the Smithfield library. When the man arrived he was ambushed by three young men, assaulted and robbed.
Nightingall was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment with immediate parole, alongside additional fines for drug possession offences. Earlier one of the other men in the group Max Fryer was also sentenced to 10 months in prison with immediate parole.
Now the court have heard the case of the third man in the trio, John-Joseph Charles Raphael Sarota-Novak-Patterson, who police described as the main perpetrator of the physical violence.
The court was shown video footage filmed by the offenders where they accused the victim of being a pedophile.
In the video which ran for several minutes the trio can be heard saying, ““You wanna get shot. You wanna get hung. You wanna get f—-d up. You give me three grand otherwise I’ll tell the police and my boys, and I’ll cut your fingers off.
“Where’s your phone, brah? We’re going to f–k you up so bad.” their comments reported by the Courier Mail.
The video showed Sarota-Novak-Patterson putting the victim in a headlock, punching him, throwing him to the ground and dragging the man who was screaming. Fryer struck the man with a baseball bat. The men demanded the victim give them his bank account details.
Police have confirmed that no charges were brought against the victim as there was no evidence to to back up the claim, and the offenders have refused to provide officers with the codes to unlock their phones.
Sarota-Novak-Patterson arrived at court holding a bible and his lawyer told the acting magistrate that his client was a devout church going Catholic and his behaviour on this occasion was an “aberration”
Acting Magistrate Raimund Heggie sentenced him to 15 months’ imprisonment, with parole from the day of sentence, and ordered him to pay $1500 compensation within two months or serve 50 days imprisonment.
The case is one of a series of similar attacks that have occurred across Australia in recent years. Similar assaults have occurred in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
Last month Western Australian police issued a warning to vigilante groups warning them about taking the law into their own hands.
The warning came after series of videos showing teenage boys in Perth’s southern suburbs confronting men they’ve allegedly lured to locations via online dating apps where they are accused of being pedophiles.
