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A sexual predator abused three young women who thought he was an Uber driver and later told police he had been set up, a court has been told.
Francesco ‘Frank’ De Luise, 60, was jailed for 8½ years by Judge John Smallwood in the County Court in Melbourne on Thursday.
The court was told that on three separate occasions in 2021 and 2022, De Luise picked up three drunken young women as they waited for a rideshare outside popular Melbourne venues.
Each time, De Luise began groping the women shortly after driving away from the scene.
Judge Smallwood said the offending was made more serious by the “sheer vulnerability” of the young women who were unable to escape.
“Each of the victims was alone, each victim was intoxicated and effectively in the circumstances in which they found themselves trapped,” he said.
‘I’m not saying people were lured into the vehicle … but she thought she was in Uber and you knew she believed it’.
Francesco De Luise showed no emotion when he was imprisoned. Image: Included
The court was told the first victim was approached after leaving the Retro Club in Melbourne’s CBD. She started to slap De Luise’s hand away and say stop when he started touching her.
“Come and let me alone,” said De Luise.
He grabbed her crotch and began to squeeze before she demanded that he pull away and let her go.
The second victim was approached in the rain walking along St Kilda Rd, mistaking De Luise’s black Toyota HiLux for the Uber she ordered.
He told her the back door was broken and she should ‘come in at the front’.
De Luise began to rub the woman’s legs before she began to masturbate.
“Give me two minutes … I just need two minutes,” he told her.
De Luise relented and stopped after the woman demanded he let her out and managed to take a photo as he drove away.
The court was told the third victim was picked up outside a Richmond hotel, believing De Luise was an Uber sent by her boyfriend.
“You don’t care, you don’t care that you got into the car,” he told the petrified woman who pulled up her skirt.
Judge Smallwood said she did not try to push De Luise away because the car was moving and she was afraid he would get angry and ‘do something stupid’.
He will be eligible for parole in December 2029. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Liam Beatty.
De Luise stopped the car in a secluded place when he began to masturbate, penetrating the woman’s vagina with his fingers.
She managed to set her phone on sound to record the interaction.
During his interview after De Luise was arrested in late 2022, Judge Smallwood said he completely denied responsibility and essentially blamed the victim’.
The court was told he claimed the third victim had ‘set him up and lured him right in’.
In a victim impact statement, she told the court she ‘thought I was going to die’ that night.
“In the days that followed, I remember trying to scrub him off … I could still feel his hands on my body,” she said.
“I’ll never forget the feeling.”
The court was told that a psychologist later found that De Luise had taken to drinking heavily under the stress of a failed investment and that the offending would not have happened if he had not been drunk.
Judge Smallwood expressed ‘some doubt’ about this, saying he had seen the footage and that De Luise ‘didn’t appear drunk’.
“It was put forward that this was situational, I don’t accept that – this did not happen by accident,” he said.
“This is an exercise in male rights and must be condemned.”
De Luise showed no emotion as he was told he would spend at least six years in custody after pleading guilty to three counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual activity directed at a person and rape.