A Nepalese immigrant has been jailed for raping an intellectually disabled woman in his care while working for the Department of Human Services in Adelaide.
Father-of-one Arjun Kandel, 45, who was allowed to move to Australia in 2009 before becoming a qualified disability care worker and getting citizenship in 2017, was sentenced to 12 years’ jail with a seven-year non-parole period in the South Australian District Court last week.
Judge Liesl Kudelka said she hoped the prison term served as a warning to predators like Kandel who commit horrific acts against vulnerable women like the victim, referred to as CD by the court, and think they can get away with it.
Kandel pleaded not guilty to raping then then-35-year-old woman, who has the intellect of a child and requires 24-hour staff support, at a residential care facility in August 2020, but was convicted by Judge Kudelka in May. He was found not guilty of another charge of aggravated indecent assault of another woman at the care home.
According to Judge Kudelka’s sentencing notes Kandel raped and indecently assaulted CD after she came back from community activities, and then washed her bedding a pyjamas to try to cover up his crime.
When a night shift worker arrived CD said she was not happy and did not feel well, and that there was blood in the toilet and on the sheets.
CD later told another staff member that Kandel put his penis inside her and touched her breasts, and she was taken for a medical examination.
CD’s foster mother, DM, said in a victim impact statement that CD suffered physical trauma and pain for three weeks after the attack, lost trust in her carers, and has been left with feelings of guilt.
“DM too has a shattered trust of support workers and the system’s response made her feel overwhelmingly undervalued as CD’s full-time guardian. She said it was urgent to move CD to a new home base and support network so that she could feel safe in the world again,” the judge wrote to Kandel in sentencing.
“She described you as a perpetrator exploding reality from the nightmare of every parent’s fear of abuse in supportive care. She says you paraded as a supportive carer who then abused the most vulnerable person behind closed doors.”
In sentencing Judge Kudelka also took into account an incident months before the rape where Kandel made a comment about CD’s breasts that was “highly inappropriate and indicative of having a sexual interest in CD”.
