Francis John Wark gets 18 years jail for Hayley Dodd’s manslaughter

The convicted rapist who robbed teenager Hayley Dodd of her life more than two decades ago has been jailed for 18 years, the longest sentence ever handed out for manslaughter by a WA judge. Late last month, a Supreme Court jury cleared Francis John Wark, 65, of the 17-year-old’s murder but convicted him of her manslaughter following a six-week retrial, sparked by a successful appeal. In 2018, after a judge-alone trial, retired Justice Lindy Jenkins found Wark not guilty of wilful murder but guilty of murder, and jailed him for life with a non-parole period of 21 years. Today, Justice Stephen Hall jailed Wark for 18 years, finding the circumstances of the case made it among the “worst cases of manslaughter” in WA legal history. Those factors included Hayley’s age and vulnerability, the violence used and the sexual motivation behind the attack, the disposal of her body and the continued refusal to reveal its location and his tendency to pick up lone women and attack them. The previous highest sentence for a similar crime was 12 years. Hayley, of Mandurah, was just days into a working holiday around Australia and was working as a roustabout in Dongara when she set off to visit a boy she had a crush on at a farm near Moora. She was last seen on the side of North West Road in Badgingarra, close to where Wark was living at the time with a convicted paedophile at about 11.40am on July 29, 1999. Justice Hall found the jury must have rejected Wark’s alibi — that he could not have committed the crime because he did not leave Moora until after midday. Justice Hall found Wark stopped alongside Hayley and likely offered her a lift, possibly by revealing his “innocent” connection to the Hammond family, whom Hayley intended to visit, before he violently attacked her with a sexual motive. “At around the time you stopped, you formed an intention to sexually assault Ms Dodd, she resisted and a violent struggle ensued,” Justice Hall said. Justice Hall said he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the earring found in the car seat cover taken from the ute in 1999, but not discovered until a cold case review in 2013, was Hayley’s. He also said a single hair found in a vacuuming from the car’s footwell was also the teen’s. The judge said Wark was bigger and stronger than Hayley, who was walking alone in a remote area, and he “used that vulnerability to your advantage” for his “own sexual gratification without regard to the wishes or wellbeing of Ms Dodd”. Justice Hall said while he was found not guilty of the teen’s murder, “you did physically attack her with sufficient force that you killed her,” he said, adding that he has kept the location of the teen’s body a “secret” for more than two decades had “magnified” the anguish for Hayley’s family. Director of Public Prosecutions Amanda Forrester SC said his crime was “deserving of a starting point at the maximum” sentence — which was at the time 20 years. Ms Forrester said as well as those closest to her, Hayley’s killing effected many people in the community, and followed the vanishing of three women — Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon — from Claremont in the mid-1990s. “It highlights young women were not safe to go about their daily business as they pleased ... they were not free from the danger of attack,” she said. She said Wark deprived the teen from a full and happy life. “Whatever the offender did to Hayley Dodd, only he knows,” she said. Wark continued to deprive Hayley’s family of the comfort and the teen of the dignity of a proper burial, the prosecutor said. “The gravamen of this offending is not necessarily how the offender effected his killing of Hayley. The fact is he did kill her and he did so unlawfully, and that was the finding of the jury. That he has callously disposed of her and is prolonging the agony of her family is a significant aggravating feature of this offence,” she said. She pointed to Wark’s “violent and sadistic” attack of a woman in Queensland in 2007, for which he has been in prison for since then, and rejected the argument that should be taken into account. “If a sentence deprived him of any useful life (after release) then so be it,” she said. “He has demonstrated that the community needs to be protected from him.” Wark’s defence lawyer Darryl Ryan chose not to elaborate on his written submissions in open court. Hayley’s mother Margaret and her daughter Toni decided to read their heartbreaking victim impact statements aloud to the court, Mrs Dodd describing how her daughter was a “beautiful 17-year-old girl whose only crime was naivety, wanting to travel and experience Australian and paid dearly for her ambition with her life”. “It would be impossible to describe to you the full impact of the past 22 years of sheer hell, despair, helplessness, devastation, dysfunctional and the destructive effect on our family,” she said. “Watching my husband ... a strong man, become nothing more than a vegetable ... no longer able to leave the house, no longer able to talk.” Mrs Dodd said her home became “more like a prison than a home” and that some of her children chose to leave because they could no longer “stand the sorrow”. “This pain we have to live with until the day we die. No parole or early release for us,” she said. “The best we can hope for is that now the open wound can start closing and even though the scars will always remain. “We so desperately need to find Hayley and afford her the decent Christian farewell she deserves and to have some peace. Only one person can tell us where her remains are and that is Mr Wark. I pray he does not continue to hold that secret.” Following Wark’s manslaughter conviction, The West Australian revealed he was still a “person of interest” in the disappearance of mother Katie O’Shea, who vanished from the North Queensland town of Atherton in 2005. Wark was living about 30km away at the time. Ms O’Shea’s daughter Lily Parmenter said she hoped Wark had nothing to do with her mother’s death because “he’s a monster”. “But at the time time as well, I have to follow where the evidence goes, and if the evidence eventually shows it was him, I’m going to throw up,” she said. The sentence was backdated to 2019, when he finished serving his 12-year sentence over the 2007 rape. He will be eligible for parole after 16 years, but will be subject to WA’s no body, no parole laws.