WARNING: Disturbing content

SADISTIC rapist “JD”, who claims a tracking anklet would ruin his beach trips now he’s out of prison, blamed his reign of terror on the “inviting demeanour” and “revealing dress” of the women he attacked.

The North Shore rapist, as he was known during his year of terrifying assaults, viewed his attacks as “lapses” and attempted to blame his behaviour on “phases of the moon, his diet and the inviting demeanour and dress of his victims”.

But the now 62-year-old sadist, who threatened women with murder after he raped them at knifepoint if they went to police, is fighting parole supervision.

Back on the streets after serving 18 years for the brutal attacks on eight young women, JD is now applying to his community supervision terminated.

The one-time businessman stalked and raped women while wearing a hood and was later deemed to have “ingrained deviant desires”.

His victims, the youngest of whom was just 16, are believed to have suffered lifelong psychological effects.

During his attacks, which began in 1995, he would hold a hunting or fishing knife to the woman’s neck, stuff a gag down her throat and threaten to kill her.

On Monday, a NSW Supreme Court judge granted JD the temporary suppression of his name during an application in which he sought to reject strict supervision and wear a satellite tracking device on his ankle.

During the hearing, forensic psychiatrist Dr Anthony Samuels said JD met the criteria of “sexual sadism” and was “vulnerable to relapse”.

Through his lawyer Angela Cook, JD — who was unhappy about media covering his court appearance — he said he feared for his safety because he was bashed in prison 16 years ago.

Ms Cook said wearing a tracking device made him uncomfortable when he went to the beach.

But according to Justice Robert Hulme, who in July 2000 sentenced the rapist to a maximum 20 years’ prison, a psychiatrist concluded that JD had “very significant risks of reoffending”.

Justice Hulme also found that JD claimed victims “helped him” gain sexual gratification and that one of his attacks was so severe as to cause “serious psychological damage”.

JD’s reign of terror began in 1995, after his wife had left him and they had sold their matrimonial home.

He moved in with his new girlfriend at her parents’ house in northwestern Sydney, and ran a business.

Over a period of 12 months — peaking in May 1996, when in just over three weeks he stalked and raped two women and a teenager — women came to live in fear of the “North Shore rapist”.

It would take police operating under Strike Force Allier until February 1997, to charge him with multiple offences of sexual assault and stalking.

After a month-long surveillance operation, detectives arrested JD at Bondi as he was “hunting beachside streets for new victims”.

JD’s modus operandi was to park his White Holden Commodore with customised vanity plates on week nights near train stations and bus stops.

Operating in the suburbs of Artarmon, Wollstonecraft, Balgowlah, Epping and Eastwood on Sydney’s North Shore, he watched women making their way home alone.

Dressed in dark clothing and a hooded top and armed with a knife, he would target attractive women who he later claimed invited sexual assault by their enticing clothing and disposition.

Alighting from his car, he would grab the women from behind, threaten them, push a gag into her mouth and then rape them.

During the rape he would threaten to kill the victim if she reported the attack to police.

Justice Hulme’s judgment details each assault in horrifying detail.

On September 17, 1996, a 23-year-old woman going to start a work shift took a train to Artarmon Station and walked to a key card machine directly opposite.

It was around 9.50pm and she withdrew $100 from the machine, placed it into her bag and had walked down the road, crossed a railway bridge and entered a laneway when a male voice right behind her called out, “give me your money or I’ll hurt you”.

As the woman screamed “help”, she was grabbed from behind by a man who said, “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up or I’ll use my knife on you.”

Physically shaking with terror, the woman handed over her $100 and begged “please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me”.

The man pushed a dark rag into her mouth and repeated, “Shut up or I’ll hurt you,” while he pressed a knife into her neck and dragged her down a dark pedestrian tunnel saying, “Give me all your credit cards, give me all your cards.”

She did so, and he thrust his hand under her jumper and fondled her breasts.

Inside the dark tunnel, she pleaded, “Please don’t rape me,” and he said, “I won’t rape you,” but forced her hands behind her back and tied them up, banging her head against the wall.

He then raped her.

When he finished, he looked at her driver’s licence and said, “I know where you live, so if you tell anybody, I’ll come and get you because I know where you live.”

Untying the woman’s hands, he again sexually assaulted her, grabbed the gag out of her mouth and took off.

The woman picked up her bag and ran straight to work. Soon after, she moved to a different home because she was terrified her attacker would find her.

After his eventual arrest and charge, JD was examined by consultant psychiatrist Dr Chiu Wong, who found “sufficient negative prognostic pointers in the accused’s case to indicate very significant risks of reoffending”.

The offender had convictions for sex crimes going back to the 1970s and 1980s, which made Dr Wong sceptical he could be rehabilitated because he was not motivated to seek treatment.

Dr Wong told the court JD “appeared to deny to some extent the presence of a deep-seated problem in himself and there’s the tendency for him to attribute his criminal behaviour to some extrinsic factors’’.

Another psychiatrist who examined JD concluded he “tended to minimise his behaviour and showed an extraordinary lack or insufficiency of insight into the effect of his behaviour on his victims”.

After pleading guilty in 2000, JD offered a tearful apology to his victims who were seated in the courtroom.

But he could not guarantee that he would not commit more sex offences.

“I don’t know what to say, I can’t undo the damage,’’ he said. “I’d just like to apologise to the victims for the stress and grief that I have caused you, your families and friends.’’

But back in the Supreme Court this week, JD claimed he was the victim.

He told the court he feared he would be attacked if he was named or photographed.

Lawyer Angela Cook said “he has concerns for his safety in the community if an image is out in the media”.

Justice Ian Harrison granted the temporary suppression until the case returns this month.

Contact candace.sutton@news.com.au with any comments