On Monday, at Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court, solicitor Vincent Stanizzo tried to reverse his guilty plea, submitting that he had told his lawyers Carolyn Davenport and Glenn Henniker “many, many times” he was innocent, before pleading guilty to two counts each of indecent assault and intimidation.
During cross-examination, Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi said that Stanizzo pleaded guilty only in the face of a strong prosecution case including a recording of him threatening to kill a former employee and his family. At the time, when the prosecution had submitted its case, and Stanizzo pleaded guilty, the facts before the court detailed what he did, when the victim of Stanizzo’s sexual assault told the facts to a male employee.
Allegedly, Stanizzo said that he and his mafia friends would “bury” the man and “slice” them up “like mortadella – bit by bit, bit by bit.”
However, the 57-year old solicitor said that he entered the guilty pleas only after his lawyer Ms Davenport told him that he had “nil and Buckley’s” chances of winning, though he wanted to face trial “at all times.”
In the earlier proceedings, it was disclosed to the court how solicitor Stanizzo often asked a particular female client to rub his neck and suggestively touched her during meetings. Then on September, 2008, the solicitor went to the client’s home, ambushed her while he was semi-naked and then forced himself upon her.
When the woman started screaming, Stanizzo told her in true Mafioso style that he would “put her in the ocean with concrete legs.” Stannizo again made an indecent assault when in May 2009, the woman went to the office of VF Stanizzo to seek legal advice from an employee. The employee later left the firm after being threatened by Stanizzo.
Stanizzo maintains that it is all a misunderstanding and wrong advice from his lawyers and that he could only “vaguely” recall of having ever signed documents for a guilty plea.