Tom Silvagni’s disgusting act immediately after rape revealed

Minutes before deciding to rape a friend of his girlfriend, Tom Silvagni began weaving a series of lies and deceptions in an ill-fated effort to avoid taking responsibility.

These lies, described in court this week as “immediate gaslighting” and “subtle deception”, almost left the victim doubting her own experience.

But a jury of 12 Victorians saw the reality of the mirage after a trial that lasted almost two weeks.

Just minutes after midday on December 5, two words rang out in the silent courtroom of the District Court of Victoria.

“Guilty…guilty,” the jury foreman said after each charge was read by Judge Gregory Lyon’s assistant.

Silvagni, the 23-year-old youngest son of Carlton Hall of Famer Stephen Silvagni and former TV presenter Jo Silvagni, reacted with surprise, putting his head in his hands and leaning the full weight of his body back into his chair.

Seven days later, the woman he raped spoke forcefully as she addressed him at a pre-sentence hearing on Friday.

“You were my friend, someone I thought I could trust… and today you can’t interrupt me, you can’t twist my words,” he said.

The maximum penalty for rape in Victoria is 25 years.

Speaking in court, Crown Prosecutor Jeremy McWilliams said Silvagni’s offending was made more serious by “cunning deceptions” and “sustained dishonesty” taken to “quite extraordinary lengths” in an attempt to avoid accountability.

“To deny her experience of reality shows a real moral culpability and a real moral deficit, a real lack of empathy, a real sense of entitlement,” he said.

During the trial, jurors heard the woman had been invited to the lavish Silvagni home in Balwyn North by a friend – Silvagni’s girlfriend.

He arrived shortly after midnight and spent some time socializing with Silvagni, his girlfriend and her friend, with whom he had previously had a casual sexual relationship.

Later that night, the woman and the other man had consensual sex while staying in the guest room.

But shortly before 2 a.m., the other man decided he had to leave.

He testified to the jury that he woke Silvagni up at 1:57 a.m. because he had to move his car outside Silvagnis’ door before taking an Uber.

Silvagni’s lawyer, David Hallowes SC, argued during the pre-sentence hearing that what happened next should have been “relative spontaneity” as his client clearly thought the other man would stay the night.

Silvagni opened the door to the guest room, claiming that his friend’s Uber was canceled and he was going back upstairs.

About five minutes later the door opened again and a man, clearly identified as Silvagni, according to the verdict of the jury, quickly entered the dark room.

At the hearing, Silvagni vehemently denied that he was the one who entered the room and maintained that he did not rape the woman.

Outside the court on Friday, his father said they were considering appeal options.

The woman told the court the man got on the bed with her and inserted his fingers into her vagina.

She said he reacted with shock, told her “no” and moved her body away.

He said that after recognizing his voice, he quickly began to suspect that it was Silvagni and not the second man.

The jury was told that when challenged directly about this, Silvagni claimed he was the other person, saying: “Yes it’s me, why not?”

He pinned her hands behind her back, held her body down, and penetrated her again with his fingers.

He proved to have one hand free and reached down where he felt her long hair.

“Tom, I know it’s you, you’re the only man left at home,” he said.

The jury heard Silvagni quickly left the room, slamming the door behind him.

She got into an Uber around 2:30 a.m., but Silvagni stopped her in the hallway, asked what was going on and asked for a hug.

On the way home, he began telling people about what happened, including his mother, two friends, and Silvagni’s girlfriend.

Early in the morning the next day, Silvagni forged his friend’s Uber bill to show that Silvagni had left his house an hour late.

At trial, Silvagni’s defense acknowledged that this occurred, but argued that it was done out of panic, not to avoid responsibility.

“Could it be a young man who panics when allegations are made about something he didn’t do?” Mr Hallowes asked questions in his opening statement.

About six hours after the rape, Silvagni began communicating with her friend. “Are you awake?” he messaged. and making two missed phone calls.

The duo shared two meetings, the details of which are unknown, between 9.47 and 10.01 in the morning.

But in messages he sent a day or two later, Silvagni told his friend to lie and “just say you walked into (the woman’s) room when your Uber was cancelled.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to make sure his lies don’t destroy us,” he said.

The woman reported the incident to the police and called Silvagni 13 days after the rape, and the conversation was secretly recorded by the police.

He falsely claimed that his friend told him he was coming back to the room and that he was “really drunk” and that the night was “a bit of a blur.”

Silvagni pressured the woman to move on and forget about it.

Speaking in court on Friday, the woman said that the almost two years since she was raped had taken a huge toll on her.

“While you were trying to avoid responsibility, I had to confront the trauma,” he said.

“Every deviation, every excuse made it harder for me to heal.

“You directly denied the confusion you created… the fear you created in me was not just from the attack, you made me not trust myself.”

The woman said her actions made her second-guess every new connection or interaction with people.

He told the court that Silvagni had tried to rewrite the truth, changing evidence and asking others to lie on his behalf, but the truth “was solid”.

“Tom Silvagni, you raped me not once but twice,” she said.

“You know this, I know this, and now everyone knows it too.”

Silvagni will be sentenced on Wednesday.