A SADISTIC slave master beyond redemption has been freed on parole, a year before his jail sentence was due to expire.

Graeme John Slattery was jailed for 14 years for heinous crimes during a decade-long reign of terror during which he brutalised men, women, and children.

One woman he enslaved in a horrific three-year campaign of torture was forced to drink motor oil and eat excrement.

READ MORE ABOUT HIS REIGN OF TERROR

Slattery’s punishment for his appalling crimes was half as long as his own father thought he deserved.

Now, witnesses to his foul deeds are frightened he is back on the streets.

Sources say the criminal, described by the man who arrested him as a master manipulator, continued his controlling ways behind bars.

“He was a puppeteer, and he ruled the roost,’’ one said.

One veteran police investigator told the Herald Sun Slattery, now 52, was one of the cruellest and most manipulative criminals he had ever encountered.

The thug’s reign of terror spanned more than a decade, running up a toll of at least a dozen victims whom he took macabre pleasure in beating and humiliating.

He kept one woman for 12 months in the garage of the Warrnambool home he shared with his six children and wife Julie.

The “family slave” was made to perform naked cartwheels for Slattery’s mates and forced to get a tattoo with the words “toe rag” — his nickname for her.

In 2004, Slattery was sentenced on almost 70 charges including intentionally causing serious injury, false imprisonment, indecent assault, fraud and assault.

A staggering 42 of the charges related to his main victim.

Judge Graeme Crossley said Slattery had humiliated and inflicted pain on his victims to satisfy his cruel and macabre sense of humour.

Jailing him for at least 11½ years, he said Slattery showed no remorse and “there is nothing before me to suggest that there is any likelihood of rehabilitation.”

His victims and even Slattery’s own father condemned the sentence, which could have seen him paroled as early as November 2012, as unjust.

Sources say Slattery was the puppetmaster of his division at Marngoneet Correctional Centre.

They say he was allowed to hand-pick prison mates to share a 9-man self-catering cottage, and chose only those he could control.

“He had everyone doing what he wanted, like it was a game. He wanted to be in charge and run the cottage,” a source said.

Source claim his wife Julie and two of his children, who were constantly by his side during the trial, regularly visited him in prison.

Yesterday Mrs Slattery denied she knew her husband had been released.

In a statement released to the Herald Sun, the Adult Parole Board said its paramount consideration was public safety.

Slattery’s stringent parole conditions include a curfew, drug and alcohol testing, 24/7 monitoring and a ban on contacting his victims or their families.

Retired Warrnambool detective Fred Hughson, who arrested Slattery, told the Herald Sun he was a master manipulator with a sadistic streak.

“He was certainly a dangerous person at the time and seemed to enjoy inflicting pain on others,” he said.

Peter Tieppo, a former neighbour of Slattery who witnessed him abusing the main victim, said he would have a number of sleepless nights knowing the man was out on the streets.

“He seemed an OK bloke when he first moved in but turned out to be a nut case.”