A former Central Coast tradie turned sexual sadist and torturer who washed and groomed teenage girls he raped and burnt with cigarettes has been sentenced.

In what was described as an “unusual” hearing Aron Michael Goodrem was sentenced in the Local Court while his judgment in the District Court for rape and serious assaults on four young women is delayed because of COVID-19.

And Goodrem, whose tattooed face was partly obscured by a thick prison beard, has avoided being sent to one of NSW’s feared remand jails by insisting on today’s hearing.

Downing Centre Local Court heard the man who has pleaded guilty to raping and torturing women, one by stubbing lit cigarettes on her arm, did not want to go to a remand prison.

In a complicated argument about prison classifications, the court heard Goodrem would have to leave his current facility, Hunter Correctional Centre, and go back to remand, possibly to the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre (MRRC) prison hated by inmates.

Looking nervous and constantly rubbing his face and wringing his hands, the 30-year-old former landscaper was sentenced on lesser charges of perverting the course of justice and breaching an AVO.

NSW Deputy Chief Magistrate Jane Mottley said Goodrem, a learner driver, had pretended his pregnant female passenger was behind the wheel when the car he was driving struck another vehicle.

That car’s driver, also pregnant, fractured her pubic bone in the 2016 collision.

Goodrem later pleaded guilty to doing an act to pervert the course of justice and to two counts of breaching an AVO when he tried to call a woman from jail to force her to put $50 in his prison bank account.

Sentenced to a total of 15 months, Goodrem will be able to stay at the Hunter prison complex in Cessnock until his September sentencing on 21 offences, including seven counts of rape.

Originally facing 79 charges, he has pleaded guilty to seven rape charges, seven charges of common assault, four of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and three of stalk, intimidate, cause fear of physical harm.

At a sentence hearing in March before District Court Judge John Pickering, Goodrem was described by his victims in submissions as “evil”.

One woman described how she was made to feel like a “caged animal”.

One victim, who said she had felt suicide was the “only way” to escape Goodrem, told how she was punched, had lit cigarettes stubbed out on her arm and was threatened with a machete.

“Aron scarred my body, bruised me and made me bleed,” she said.

Another told Judge John Pickering how she was convinced by Goodrem that her family and friends did not care where she was.

The now 30-year-old appeared “charming” at first, one woman said, but she now realised that was part of his “grooming process”.

Goodrem would pick out her clothes, physically dress her, wash her hair and apply deodorant to her.

She recalled running down the street in only her underpants after finally escaping him.

“I had no control over my life,” she said. “I felt like a caged animal. I was an object to him.”

Former ice-addict Goodrem was arrested following a six-month investigation by detectives from the State Crime Command’s Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad, for crimes committed across western Sydney and Parkes in NSW’s central west between 2009 and 2017.

The NSW Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad set up Strike Force Cilento to investigate the ­historical allegations against Mr Goodrem

The investigation followed a tip-off from the specialist police domestic violence unit in ­Sydney’s southwest region that four women had been sexually ­assaulted by the same man who lived in Kariong.

Goodrem’s sister Danielle Bennett gave evidence before the court that the family was exposed to “extensive” domestic violence at the hands of their father.

She said her brother was kidnapped from school by his abusive dad, who once threw their mother from a moving car, and for several years stalked the family once they escaped.

Judge Pickering told the victims that given the extent of the offending “the sentence is going to be lengthy, obviously”.

Downing Centre Court on Wednesday heard Goodrem was taking anti-domestic abuse and addiction courses while at Hunter prison and wanted to continue.

candace.sutton@news.com.au