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A Melbourne man who brutally raped two girls in his car in separate attacks has been jailed for 22 years for a spate of violent offending a judge described as cruel and dehumanising.

Josh Vassallo, 27, on Friday faced the Victorian County Court, where it was revealed his latest crimes also included kidnapping, beating and forcing a third victim to eat dog food.

Josh Vassallo raped two teenage girls and attacked a man over 22 months.Credit: Darrian Taylor

“Your offending has profoundly impacted the lives of the complainants and their families. The impact has been significant and at times overwhelming,” Judge Helen Syme told Vassallo.

“Each complainant has had their lives irrevocably changed for the worst by your cruel and selfish acts.”

Over the course of 22 months, from early 2019 to late 2020, Vassallo raped two teenage girls – he drugged one beforehand – and also kidnapped and bashed a man he had asked to fix his car.

Vassallo met his first rape victim through family and began communicating with the girl online and in person over a number of years.

In January 2019, he collected the girl, then aged 14, from her home to take her to McDonald’s, but instead parked near a reserve and refused her request to be driven home.

When the girl tried to escape, Vassallo grabbed her by the ankles and forced her back inside the car as she unsuccessfully tried to fight him off.

After raping the girl, the girl managed to escape and ran home.

“[She] regarded you as a trusted figure, [like] a brother. You followed in your car and stopped when she arrived at her street,” Syme said.

When the child’s mother later spoke with Vassallo, he denied the offending and said everyone was calling her daughter “a slut, a junkie and a liar”.

In October 2019, Vassallo forced a man he had asked to fix his car to drive to a mechanic’s workshop in Truganina, in Melbourne’s west. There, he beat the man, made him wear a dog collar, pushed him into a toilet, hit him with a crowbar and made him eat dog food. Vassallo filmed the sustained assault.

The victim told police he had feared he would lose his face when his head was forced under the bonnet of a car and within millimetres of the engine fan. Vassallo then threw the man into a pan of used car oil, until a worker intervened and took the victim home.

“While on the ground in the toilet, you filmed [the man] on your mobile phone, telling him to eat dry dog food, forcing to do so, shoving his face into the food and kicking his head into the bowl. He complied out of fear,” the judge said.

“A callous and degrading series of events, purportedly [carried out] seemingly with some delight on your part. Others joined in on assault and humiliation,” Syme said.

‘Your actions were … sustained, cruel and degrading. Dehumanising and frightening in nature.’

“Your actions were … sustained, cruel and degrading. Dehumanising and frightening in nature.”

In 2020, Vassallo was on parole on unrelated offences when met his third victim, a girl then aged 15, through mutual friends. In November that year, he collected the teen and her friend from a family lunch in Port Melbourne before plying them with GHB, telling them the drug they’d never heard of would make them feel “happy”.

Over the following four hours he drove the pair around Melbourne’s western suburbs, during which time the 15-year-old lost consciousness. When he dropped the girl’s friend home, he parked near a school and raped the incapacitated girl in his car.

He then parked in the car park of a Werribee shopping centre and locked the unconscious girl inside, while he bought bread rolls. He then dropped her home.

When the girl’s parents asked what was wrong, Vassallo lied that the girl was drunk. The parents took their daughter to hospital, but were initially turned away due to COVID-19 wait times even though they were unaware she was drugged.

While awaiting trial on the rape allegations, the court heard, Vassallo was in custody in Marngoneet Correctional Centre on unrelated matters when he attempted to pervert the course of justice.

He gave his cellmate, who was about to be released, a letter to post to a friend. The letter contained instructions to threaten a child witness and offer her money to change her evidence. Vassallo wrote that if the girl didn’t comply, then “revenge would be carried out on girls and their mothers”.

Despite initially denying his offending, Vassallo later pleaded guilty to all charges, including rape, supplying a drug of dependence to a child, false imprisonment, kidnapping and assault.

The court heard a report later found Vassallo might have psychopathic tendencies and posed a moderate to high risk of violent reoffending if released.

Syme jailed him for 22 years and ordered he serve 14 years before he is eligible for parole. He will also be put on the sex offender register for life.

In handing down her sentence, the judge apologised to Vassallo’s victims on behalf of the justice system for the delays in the prosecution, following a string of court adjournments instigated by their attacker over three years.

Outside court, one of the rape victims hoped the sentence would encourage people to come forward and report “other monsters in the world” to police.

“I got justice,” she said.

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