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A sex offender and airline baggage courier who stole women's hair to satisfy a fetishism has been jailed by a Melbourne judge for at least two years.
Rodney Lyle Petersen, 30, of Wallan, has pleaded guilty to 50 counts of theft of women's hair that he stole and collected from the baggage of Qantas passengers.
Sentencing him in the Victorian County Court Judge Jennifer Coate also reinstated a previously suspended prison term imposed for Petersen's attempted rape conviction in 2004.
The court heard Petersen would pull over in his courier van and rummage through the lost or delayed luggage that he was returning to Qantas passengers.
The courier collected the pubic and head hair from brushes and underwear in the baggage putting it in plastic slips and recording the owner's personal details in an exercise book.
Petersen suffered from a range of sexual deviancies including fetishism, sexual sadism and frotteurism, an unusual condition in which sexual satisfaction is gained by actual or fantasised rubbing up against another person, the court heard.
"I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that you posed a real risk to the safety of women in the community," the judge said.
Petersen was sentenced to a maximum of two years and eight months, with a minimum parole period of two years, for the theft charges as well as previous convictions for assault with attempt to rape, recklessly causing injury and robbery.
- AAP
