‘I miss feeling safe’: Melbourne grandmother forced to place ill husband in care after vicious attack
A 78-year-old grandmother says she’s been robbed of her independence and the ability to care for her husband after being beaten unconscious on the steps of her South Yarra church and left with serious injuries.
Penelope Katsavos was unlocking the front door of the Greek Orthodox church, where she volunteered, when 27-year-old Amrick Roy viciously attacked her shortly after 6am on March 13, 2021.
Penelope Katsavos was violently bashed as she opened her local Greek Orthodox church in South Yarra in March last year.Credit:Nine News
Stonnington council workers found her unconscious on the steps of the church and called an ambulance. The grandmother of six suffered bleeding on the brain, a fractured wrist, severe facial injuries and a badly broken pelvis.
“The impacts of these crimes … have been immense, life-changing and utterly devastating first and foremost to me and then like a shockwave throughout my entire family,” she wrote in a victim impact statement read to the County Court of Victoria on Friday.
“At 78 I was looking forward to spending any time I had left loving and caring for my husband. Amrick Roy, your choice means I’ll be spending my last days, months and years trying to cope with pain and fatigue … isolated from my friends and family and separated from my husband.
“I miss having freedom, I miss feeling safe.”
Stonnington council workers found Katsavos unconscious on the steps of the church and called an ambulance.Credit:Nine News
Katsavos said she is unable to volunteer at her church, live independently, or walk without a mobility aid because of her injuries.
The most heartbreaking impact though, she wrote, was having to place her husband of 60 years, who lives with dementia, in an aged care home as she can no longer look after him.
“No sentence you are given will change the life sentence you have given me,” she wrote.
Despite the impact of the attack on her life, Katsavos said she had forgiven Roy and hoped he would somehow learn to be a better person.
“I will continue to walk through this life with love and strength,” she wrote.
Katsavos in hospital after the attack, in a photo supplied by her family.Credit:Nine News
Roy, a science student, has pleaded guilty to five charges including recklessly causing serious injury, robbery and three counts of assault stemming from his spree of violent attacks in Prahran and South Yarra.
In the hours before attacking Katsavos, Roy was escorted from the Revolver nightclub on Chapel Street about 4.55am after attacking a man inside. He then assaulted another man on the street outside.
Soon after, he assaulted another victim outside a Bonds clothing store and then ran through Prahran Square, where he attacked a rubbish collector.
Roy was captured on CCTV cameras at 6am walking towards his final victim, Katsavos, as she was unlocking the church.
There, he began yelling and screaming at Katsavos before grabbing her shopping trolley and hitting her across the face.
“[Katsavos] remained unconscious until she was found at 6.30am by Stonnington city council workers,” prosecutor Marcel White said.
Roy, who has schizophrenia, was arrested at his Box Hill share house days later, following a public appeal for information.
During his police interview, he told investigators that the elderly woman “hit him first”.
A clinical psychiatrist who assessed Roy said he had also been diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder and should remain on an involuntary treatment order once released back into the community.
Roy’s defence team argued his name should be kept out of the media to prevent verbal attacks on him from other inmates, but Judge John Carmody rejected the request citing the severity of Roy’s crimes.
Carmody said whatever verbal abuse Roy may endure in prison was no match for the damage he had caused to his victims.
“This lady has just celebrated her 78th birthday and at 6am [was] going to do what I suspect was a daily regular thing … volunteering at her church. Next minute this young bloke full of grog and maybe other things has punched her in the head,” the judge said.
“Her life has completely changed. She’s gone from a proud independent person of Greek extraction who could cook and take care of her husband … an unwell man … to where she’s now the invalid.
“Words versus what he’s done, please.”
Roy remains in custody ahead of sentencing.
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