The wife hugged her husband after he was freed last Wednesday, and they left the courthouse together.
Ravanbakhsh Kakavand, 45, beat his wife, Elnaz Adalat, during a “complete and utter mental meltdown” in December. He bashed her on the head with a chunk of wood he found beside a highway, where passersby grabbed him and stopped the beating. The injuries Adalat sustained kept her in the hospital for 10 days.
Justice Trish Kelly of the Supreme Court of the state of South Australia said, “I have been concerned by your apparent inability to acknowledge that you have an anger management problem. Let me repeat: you have an anger management problem and it places you, your wife and everyone in your immediate environment at risk so long as you do not address it. It’s important that you understand.… You need a particular focus on anger management in order to deal with stress in an appropriate way.”
Kelly said Kakavand was fortunate Adalat lived and he was not facing murder charges. “Had those witnesses not had the presence of mind and physical capacity to restrain you, you might well have killed her,” she told Kakavand.
But Kelly’s sentencing also took into consideration that Kakavand had been tortured by the Iranian police before he escaped to Australia as a refugee. Kelly said that, in addition to Adalat’s insistence that he sponsor her family’s immigration to Australia, prompted a “complete and utter mental meltdown.”
The incident wasn’t the only instance of violence Kakavand has exhibited. Months after his arrest, Kakavand assaulted a psychiatrist for writing “something he didn’t like” in his notes. Justice Kelly said Kakavand’s “fragile psychological state” was chronic and ongoing, but also treatable.
“I’m ultimately persuaded that, in your case, it is appropriate to take the unusual step of exercising my discretion to suspend your jail term. You have the unswerving support of your wife and doctors are optimistic that, with treatment, you will not pose a risk to the community.”
