Australian rape case likened to ‘Wolf Creek’ film
Peter Van de Wetering, 48, had previously pleaded guilty to multiple charges including rape and kidnapping for the August 2013 attack on the 19-year-old woman two weeks after she arrived in Australia.
“This offending involves an entirely ruthless pursuit of a young and innocent woman for your sexual gratification,” Brisbane District Court Judge Terry Martin told Van de Wetering at the sentencing hearing.
He picked his victim up at a bus stop in the rural town of Cottonvale after she responded to an ad seeking a nanny and farmhand.
He then took her to a sheep shearing shed, where he bound and drugged her, threatened to kill her and sexually assaulted her.
She eventually lost consciousness and awoke early the next morning on the side of a rural road.
The case has attracted a great deal of attention in Australia for its similarities to the Australian film Wolf Creek, in which a sexually sadistic serial killer who drugs his victims hunts down a group of backpackers.
Despite Van de Wetering’s guilty plea, the judge said he had shown no remorse for the assault, which left the woman with physical and emotional scars.
Two years after the attack, she remains afraid of the dark, Judge Martin said.
