A 49-year-old offender who stalked a woman through central Sydney before attempting to rape her outside St Mary’s Cathedral has been jailed for three years and four months, with a judge describing the attack as appalling while also taking account of severe mental illness and unusually harsh conditions in custody.

Benjamin Charles Jones pleaded guilty to attempted sexual intercourse without consent and stalking over the October 2024 attack on a 31-year-old stranger.

NSW District Court Judge Troy Anderson imposed a two-year non-parole period, making Jones eligible to be considered for release from November 21.

That does not mean Jones will automatically walk free on that date.

Because the total sentence exceeds three years, release must be considered by the NSW State Parole Authority, which can grant parole only if satisfied it is in the interests of community safety.

The distinction is significant given headlines suggesting the offender could simply be released within about two months of sentencing.

Jones has already spent almost two years in custody since the attack, and the sentencing structure takes account of time already served.

The crime occurred late on October 22, 2024, as the woman walked through the area around St Mary’s Cathedral in the centre of Sydney.

According to the facts reported from the sentencing proceedings, Jones followed the woman for about 11 minutes.

The attack then escalated suddenly.

Jones grabbed the woman from behind and dragged her into a more concealed area near the cathedral.

During the struggle, Jones pulled down clothing and attempted to sexually assault her.

A plastic object was forced into the victim’s mouth in an apparent effort to stop her screaming.

The woman resisted and eventually managed to break free.

She ran towards members of the public who had heard her cries for help.

Police arrested Jones the following day.

At an early court appearance, Jones told the court: “I identify as transgender and queer”, before denying involvement in the incident.

Jones, who has also used the name Willow, later pleaded guilty.

The guilty plea meant the sentencing court was no longer determining whether the attack occurred or whether Jones was responsible.

The issue before Judge Anderson was what punishment should follow.

The judge described that task as difficult because of the extreme seriousness of the offending on one side and a substantial body of material about Jones’s psychiatric condition and personal circumstances on the other.

“It is certainly a difficult sentencing exercise given the appalling nature of the conduct itself,” Anderson said, according to court reporting.

“But the subjective case of the offender is powerful.”

The court heard Jones had been diagnosed with schizophrenia as well as depression, anxiety and gender dysphoria, against a background of substance misuse.

Jones had been homeless around the time of the offence after travelling from Melbourne to Sydney with little money.

A psychiatrist was told that before treatment Jones believed in an “astral world” and described delusional ideas involving a “sex spirit” and the devil.

After receiving medication, Jones reportedly said the offending left them confused and bewildered.

Mental illness did not erase responsibility for the attack.

But under NSW sentencing law, psychiatric impairment can be relevant to questions including moral culpability, deterrence, rehabilitation and whether imprisonment will be more onerous for a particular offender than it would be for an ordinary prisoner.

Judge Anderson also considered Jones’s experience behind bars.

The court heard Jones had spent much of nearly two years in custody in isolation or protective conditions because of threats from other inmates.

The judge accepted that this made imprisonment more difficult and meant the custodial sentence would “weigh more heavily” on Jones.

That approach reflects an established sentencing principle rather than a special exemption created for this case.

NSW courts can consider credible evidence that illness, disability, mental impairment or protective custody makes prison materially more burdensome.

It does not follow that an offender avoids prison altogether.

Jones received a substantial custodial sentence despite those mitigating factors.

The victim’s experience also featured prominently in the proceedings.

She told the court the attack had permanently changed the way she moved through public spaces.

Before the assault, she said, she had been accustomed to walking without fear or intimidation.

The attack destroyed that sense of security.

She described the attempted rape as an unprecedented and aggressive act and said she had become significantly more vigilant because she now understood how quickly an ordinary journey home could turn into extreme violence.

The circumstances were particularly confronting because Jones did not know the woman.

The attack was not the result of an existing relationship, argument or prior interaction.

She was a stranger going about her evening before being followed and targeted.

Jones was already known to the criminal justice system when the offence occurred.

Contemporary reporting at the time of the arrest showed there was an outstanding warrant relating to a community corrections order.

Jones had shortly beforehand been convicted in Batemans Bay Local Court of failing to comply with reporting conditions and providing false information.

Those requirements were connected to Jones’s status as a registered offender.

The wider criminal history was among the matters before the sentencing court, although not every element of that history has been publicly reproduced in sufficient detail to independently verify broad descriptions circulating online.

What can be established is that the October 2024 attack occurred only weeks after Jones had been dealt with by a court over compliance with offender-reporting obligations.

That history is likely to be relevant again when parole is considered.

The non-parole period is the minimum time an offender must spend in custody before becoming eligible for conditional release.

It is not the same as the total sentence.

For NSW offenders whose total prison term exceeds three years, the State Parole Authority must separately decide whether release should occur.

The authority considers material including the sentencing judge’s remarks, the offender’s criminal record, conduct in custody, risk assessments, rehabilitation, release plans and community safety.

Victims can also have a role in the parole process in qualifying cases.

The authority can refuse parole even after the non-parole period has expired.

If parole is granted, the offender remains under sentence in the community and is subject to conditions that can be enforced or revoked.

That legal process makes it misleading to describe November 21 as a guaranteed release date.

It is an eligibility date.

Jones’s gender identity has also become a prominent part of commentary about the case.

That issue requires care.

Jones has publicly identified as transgender and queer, and gender dysphoria was among the diagnoses considered at sentencing.

The court also heard that conditions in custody had been affected by threats from other prisoners.

Those facts make gender identity relevant to the sentencing history.

They do not establish any causal relationship between being transgender and committing sexual violence.

The offence is explained legally by Jones’s conduct, guilty plea and criminal responsibility, not by membership of a demographic group.

That distinction matters both for accurate reporting and for understanding what Judge Anderson actually did.

The judge was required to sentence an individual offender.

Australian sentencing law requires judges to consider both the objective seriousness of a crime and the subjective circumstances of the person who committed it.

Those principles can sit uncomfortably together in cases involving grave violence.

A victim may reasonably see the assault as life-changing and want a sentence that reflects its seriousness.

A sentencing judge must simultaneously consider factors such as mental illness, a guilty plea, prospects for rehabilitation and whether the conditions of imprisonment are unusually severe.

Taking those factors into account is not the same as endorsing or minimising the offending.

It is part of the sentencing task imposed by law.

The sentence nevertheless raises an understandable public-policy question about whether the minimum custodial period adequately reflects an attempted rape of a stranger.

A three-year-and-four-month head sentence with a two-year non-parole period means a substantial part of the total sentence may ultimately be served in the community if parole is approved.

For critics, the proximity of the parole eligibility date to the sentencing hearing can make the punishment appear exceptionally short.

But that appearance is partly the result of the lengthy period Jones has already spent imprisoned on remand.

Time in custody before sentence is generally taken into account so that an offender does not serve that period and then begin the court-imposed term again from zero.

The more important question is not how many weeks separate sentencing from eligibility, but the total custodial time required and whether release at the earliest opportunity would adequately protect the community.

That latter decision will now move beyond the sentencing judge.

The State Parole Authority’s statutory focus is community safety.

It can examine information unavailable or incomplete at sentencing, including behaviour in custody, treatment progress, psychiatric assessments and proposed accommodation and supervision.

Jones’s mental health will therefore remain relevant, but in a different way.

At sentencing, illness could mitigate punishment and explain why imprisonment was particularly burdensome.

At parole, authorities can consider whether psychiatric stability, treatment compliance and risk-management arrangements make supervised release safe.

The victim’s interests will remain central to the broader consequences of the case.

Her statement described a loss that cannot be measured solely in years of imprisonment: the loss of being able to walk through her own city without constantly anticipating danger.

Jones will become eligible for parole in November.

Whether release follows is not yet decided.

What has been decided is criminal responsibility for a terrifying attack on a stranger outside one of Sydney’s most prominent landmarks.

Jones pleaded guilty.

The District Court has imposed its sentence.

The next question will be whether the parole system concludes that the offender can safely serve the remainder of that sentence in the community.