A violent sex predator who went missing while on parole is still on the run more than 10 months after a return-to-prison warrant was issued.
Kiernan Joseph Donnelly was jailed for six years and four months in 2018 over the “heinous” rape of a woman in Bunbury in 2007.
Donnelly had targeted the then 32-year-old victim as she walked across a dark cricket oval near Blair Street early on November 25 that year.
He dragged the victim up to 40m into nearby bushes where he attacked her while ignoring her attempts to “humanise herself” by repeatedly telling him her name and the names of her children.
The crime had been unsolved for almost a decade, however after a cold case review in 2016, a DNA breakthrough led detectives to the married father.
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A jury found Donnelly guilty of rape after a four-day trial, and he was sentenced to four years and four months — the minimum non-parole period behind bars.
Donnelly was released on a supervised parole order in June 2022.
That order included several conditions, including a ban from contacting the victim, a requirement to attend programs and counselling, and prohibitions from drinking alcohol and changing his address without approval from his community corrections officer.
However, on April 13 last year, the Prisoners Review Board cancelled his parole because he’d absconded and his whereabouts had become “unknown”.
Donnelly had failed to attend supervision appointments and had disengaged from his parole obligations, and despite allowing him to explain his absence, he failed to do so.
WA Police in February this year said a return to prison warrant was still active, therefore confirming Donnelly was still at large.
The rapid apprehension squad is managing the search for Donnelly — who would now be 61-years-old.
“Inquiries into his whereabouts are ongoing and information regarding this individual can be provided via Crime Stoppers,” a WA Police spokeswoman said.
WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch in June last year said that “being found and or located and being arrested are two very different things”.
“We may know where people are, we may be conducting an investigation, but it may not be in Western Australia. But I really don’t want to compromise that any more,” he said.
In sentencing Donnelly in 2018, former Judge Christopher Stevenson said he had committed a “heinous crime on a stranger without feeling any concern”.
He said Donnelly ran away after the terrifying assault, leaving the woman to seek help from passengers in a passing taxi.
“It was predatory and a gross abuse of another human being for your own sexually perverted reasons,” Judge Stevenson said.
“The offending was opportunistic, in the sense the victim was plainly vulnerable and you took advantage of her vulnerability.
“Whether you were out looking for a victim is only something you know.”
In a letter read to the court by his then-lawyer John Bougher, Donnelly said he “cannot recall that night or the events that occurred that night”. He said the crime was out of character for him and “completely against my nature”.
However, Judge Stevenson said his claim that he could not remember the assault was “a very weak proposition”.
“There is no remorse and, in my view, no insight into the seriousness of the crime you committed and no understanding of the impact it has had on the victim,” he said.