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A sexual predator abused three young women who believed he was an Uber driver and later told police he’d 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 in three separate instances across 2021 and 2022, De Luise picked up three intoxicated young women as they waited for a rideshare outside popular Melbourne venues.
Each time De Luise would begin groping the women soon 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 were alone, each victim was intoxicated and effectively in circumstances where they found themselves trapped,” he said.
“I’m not making a finding people were lured into the vehicle … but she believed she was in the Uber and you knew she believed that”.
The court was told the first victim was approached after leaving the Retro Club in Melbourne’s CBD. She began hitting away De Luise’s hand and saying stop when he started touching her.
“Come on and just let me,” De Luise said.
He grabbed her crotch and started squeezing before she demanded he pull over and let her leave.
The second victim was approached in the rain walking along St Kilda Rd and assumed De Luise’s black Toyota HiLux was the Uber she ordered.
He told her the back door was broken and she should “get into the front”.
De Luise began rubbing the woman’s legs before starting to masturbate.
“Give me two minutes … I just need two minutes,” he told her.
De Luise relented and pulled over after the woman demanded he let her out, managing 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 her boyfriend had sent.
“You don’t care do you, you don’t care you got in the car,” he told the petrified woman pulling up her skirt.
Judge Smallwood said she didn’t try to push De Luise away because the car was moving and she was scared he’d get angry and “do something stupid”.
De Luise stopped the car in a secluded location as he began masturbating and penetrated the woman’s vagina with his fingers.
She managed to set her phone to audio to record the interaction.
During his interview after De Luise was arrested in late 2022, Judge Smallwood said he was “totally denying responsibility and essentially victim blaming”.
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 following I remember trying to scrub him away … I could still feel his hands on my body,” she said.
“I will never forget the feeling.”
The court was told a psychologist later found De Luise had begun to drink heavily over the stress of a failed investment, and the offending wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t intoxicated.
Judge Smallwood expressed “some dubiousness” about this, saying he had seen the recording and De Luise “didn’t appear drunk”.
“It was submitted this was situationally motivated, I don’t accept that – this didn’t happen by accident,” he said.
“This is an exercise in male entitlement and has to be condemned.”
De Luise displayed no emotion as he was told he would spend a minimum of six years in custody after pleading guilty to three counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual activity directed at a person and rape.
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