Australia: Abusive Victorian man jailed for abandoning wife in Sudan

Once she returned, he continued to keep the children away from her.

Against a backdrop of years of coercive control, physical, emotional and economic abuse, a judge ruled that Mohamed Ahmed Omer had decided to effectively dismiss his wife.

“You devised a plan to get rid of her and leave her abroad, depriving her of her children and their mother,” Judge Frank Gucciardo said as he jailed Omer on Tuesday.

“You were effectively treating her like a possession that you could simply dispose of at your own discretion.”

Omer was the first person in Victoria to be prosecuted for the Commonwealth offense of exit trafficking.

He pleaded not guilty and faced a County Court jury trial where he was found guilty in April.

Judge Gucciardo handed Omer a maximum prison sentence of four and a half years on Tuesday.

With 196 days already served, Omer will be eligible for parole in less than three years.

He gave a thumbs up to his lawyer as the verdict was handed down.

The maximum sentence for this crime is twelve years.

Omer displayed violent behavior towards his wife in the two years leading up to the trip to Sudan, including physical abuse and threats to kill her, the judge ruled.

She was dependent on her husband for money as he managed all their finances.

He even monitored her phone usage, confiscated her phone and limited her contact with family.

Judge Gucciardo ruled that the “culmination and consequence” of Omer’s pattern of coercive control over his wife resulted in his exit trading of her.

The woman described her ordeal as ‘nightmarish’ and told the court her nightmare continued as Omer moved their children from place to place to avoid her when she eventually returned to Australia.

He then took the children back to Sudan and left them there.

The distraught mother returned to look for her children, where a Sharia court stripped her of custody and threw her in jail for three days, she told a pre-sentence hearing.

Judge Gucciardo said the seriousness of his offending was high because Omer had exploited and manipulated his wife’s vulnerable condition and her dependence on him.

“Your behavior had created fear, deprived freedom and autonomy, using tactics designed to isolate, degrade and control in a targeted and insidious manner,” he said.

“This was a serious and appalling breach of trust in someone who was dependent on you.”

The judge noted that Omer had suffered an unreasonable delay as prosecutors accepted they had a lack of resources and “manpower” between their investigation and the indictment against him in 2022.