A Melbourne courier enlisted his brother for a campaign of “manipulation” aimed at covering up violence perpetuated against a woman, a court has been told.
Jawad Qayyum, 41, appeared in the Victorian County Court on Friday for sentencing after pleading guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Handing down a two-year jail sentence, Judge Frances Hogan said his offending was an attempt to “strike at the heart of the justice system in Australia” and must be condemned.
The court was told Qayyum came to the attention of police in August 2020 after a woman was admitted to the Royal Melbourne Hospital and revealed to doctors she had been subject to physical, mental and emotional abuse.
He was charged with offences including assault, intentionally causing injury and criminal damage, and was remanded in custody later that year.
Qayyum made a series of phone calls to his brother in the United States from prison, laying out a “detailed strategy” for him to contact a second woman known to the victim to convince her to make a statement to the court in his favour.
Over a three-month period, the woman was constantly called and messaged by the brother in an effort to manipulate her.
Ultimately she did not make a statement, Judge Hogan said, but if he had been successful the court would have had a “false picture of the type of person you were”.
“This was a relentless barrage of messages from a person she had never met,” she said.
“This was designed to undermine the complaint made.”
Qayyum was jailed for nine months and placed on a year-long community corrections order after pleading guilty to the violent offending in May 2021.
The court was told two men had written character references for Qayyum, describing him as a peaceful and kind person.
Judge Hogan said she gave little weight to the references, saying they were in stark contract with the “long term brutality” displayed.
“I cannot find you have made any steps in recognising that deceitful and manipulative behaviour is not tolerable in our society,” she said.
“For a tertiary-educated person of a mature age you seem to have taken a lot of time to grasp that attempting to manipulate (the woman) was wrong.”
She accepted that Qayyum was likely to be deported back to Pakistan as a result of his sentence after 18 years of living in Australia.
He will be eligible for parole after serving one year of his sentence.