A man once dubbed the ‘Inner West Rapist’ will spend the next decade behind bars after being linked to a series of attacks in the mid-2000s through family DNA.
Darren Kennedy was sentenced to 13 years without parole for sexually assaulting four women in suburban Sydney between December 2003 and March 2004.
The 54-year-old watched via video link as Judge Jennie Girdham handed down her sentence at Downing Center District Court on Friday.
Darren Kennedy was sentenced to 13 years without parole for sexually assaulting four women in suburban Sydney between December 2003 and March 2004.
Kennedy sexually assaulted four women over four months in Sydney’s inner western and eastern suburbs.
He pleaded guilty to 13 charges in May 2023, including four counts of sexual intercourse without consent, two counts of taking advantage of a person for sexual gratification, and indecent assault offences.
Judge Girdham included a separate offense of possession of child abuse material in her sentence after 174 videos and 43 images were found on her phone following her arrest.
In December 2003, Kennedy carried out his first attack on a 43-year-old woman at her Croydon home.
The victim woke up and found him crouching in his bedroom. He was wearing gloves, covering his face with a pillow and shining a flashlight into her eyes.
She was told to “just shut up,” “not look at him,” and to lift her nightgown.
His victim was forced to perform oral sex in a living room, with Kennedy telling her to “count to 20 and not tell anyone,” he said. Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The 54-year-old, once dubbed the “Inner West Rapist,” apologized to victims in a letter to the court and described his own actions as “deplorable and monstrous.”
Less than a month later, in January 2004, Kennedy found his next victim while walking home from a night out in Bondi, in Sydney’s east.
He grabbed the 23-year-old and dragged her to an alley, forcing her to the ground.
The young woman screamed and struggled before Kennedy put his hand over her mouth and told her to “shut up.”
Kennedy then raped the woman and fled the scene, telling her to “not look back.”
Kennedy’s third attack was on a 17-year-old schoolgirl at her family home in Bexley, also in January 2004.
She woke up and he climbed through her bedroom window before he caressed her face.
He covered her mouth with a gloved hand and told her to shut up and look away.
In a desperate attempt to alert her family, the teen asked Kennedy if she could use the bathroom.
The rapist then forced her out of her bedroom window and told her to go to the bathroom outside.
Kennedy then pushed her against a brick wall as she screamed for help.
Pictured: A police COMFIT of ‘inner west rapist’ Darren Kennedy from 2004
A 51-year-old woman was Kennedy’s fourth victim.
In the early morning hours of March 2004, the woman was packing her bags to catch a flight to her son’s wedding.
The rapist waited outside the woman’s home in Marrickville and, once outside, approached her and told her he “just wanted to touch her boobs”.
He then raped her twice and pulled her nightgown over her head.
After the sickening attack, Kennedy thanked his victim and told her to count to 100 as he left.
added she “didn’t want to ruin her son’s wedding by telling anyone”, the court heard.
Kennedy was arrested at his home in November 2021 following a forensic review that traced the attacks to him through a familial DNA match to material recovered from several of the crime scenes.
A police strike force was created in March 2004 to investigate attacks in a number of suburbs, including Croydon and Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west and Bondi in the east.
But the investigation was suspended in 2005 after they could not locate the offender.
The case was reopened in February 2020 and a forensic review in November 2021 traced the attacks to Kennedy through a familial DNA match to material recovered from several of the crime scenes, including on a torch, a rug and clothing. of the victims.
Kennedy was arrested at his home five days later and has remained in custody since.
All of the victims, who were aged between 17 and 51, were vulnerable and unable to defend themselves, Judge Girdham said.
They were left “humiliated and degraded” in the attacks, he added.
“The crime was abhorrent, cruel and dehumanizing,” Judge Girdham said.
“Reflecting the real damage caused (in one sentence) imposes an impossible task.”
In victim impact statements, some of the women variously described struggling with post-traumatic stress and continued problems trusting people 20 years later.
In a letter to the court, Kennedy apologized to the victims, describing his own actions as “deplorable and monstrous” and adding that his thoughts were “torn and shattered” at the time of the crimes.
Judge Girdham noted that Kennedy was struggling to cope with his own traumatic past of childhood abuse and that his previous experiences distorted his views on sexuality.
Kennedy was sentenced to a maximum of 17 years and four months in prison. He will be eligible for parole in November 2034.
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