A nine-year prison term for a man who killed two migrant sex workers within 24 hours shows that the justice system values their lives less than others, advocates say.
The Chinese student Xiaozheng Lin, 24, could walk from jail in seven years with time already served after he pleaded guilty to two manslaughter charges.
He was due to face a murder trial over the deaths of Yuqi Luo, 31, and Hyun Sook Jeon, 51, but prosecutors accepted his plea to the downgraded charges.
The women, migrants from China and South Korea, were sex workers who operated out of their apartments in Melbourne.
On Boxing Day 2022, Lin visited a brothel in Melbourne’s Oakleigh South, before a friend drove him to Luo’s La Trobe Street apartment.
After having sex, in the early hours of 27 December, he requested further services from Luo, who told him it would cost an additional $100.
Lin became enraged at this request and pushed Luo into the bed, before strangling her.
He left her gasping for air and stole $7,000 in cash along with other personal belongings.
On the evening of the same day he visited Jeon at her Docklands apartment and engaged in sex before he assaulted her.
It is unclear how Jeon died, as by the time an autopsy was performed on 31 December her body was too decomposed to ascertain a cause of death.
Justice Stephen Kaye said Lin had killed two “vulnerable and defenceless” women in their own homes.
An aggravating factor was that he was undeterred from the first assault as he then went on to kill Jeon within 24 hours, he said.
“Having assaulted Ms Luo in circumstances where you left her stricken and gasping for breath … you plainly suffered no pang of consciousness.”
Lin was silent and kept his head down as he was sentenced to a maximum of 14 years in prison, with a non-parole period of nine years.
He has served almost two years of that sentence and will be eligible for release in seven years, when he will most likely be deported back to China.
Outside court, the former MP and sex work advocate Fiona Patten said Lin’s sentence was “extraordinarily unjust and unfair”.
“You can’t help feeling that, because these women had no family in Australia, because these women were sex workers, because these women were foreign nationals, that the sentence was less than it would have been if it had been me,” she said.
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“It seems an incredibly small punishment and sentence for such a heinous crime, for two heinous crimes.”
Victoria decriminalised sex work in 2022, making it easier for sex workers to report crimes against them.
Patten, a key proponent of the laws, said one of the reasons she fought so hard for decriminalisation was to address violence against sex workers and ensure they were treated fairly.
“This is not going to send that message,” Patten said of Lin’s sentence.
Na Mon, an Asian migrant sex worker, said the community was devastated.
“As a sex worker, I feel fearful,” she said.
“Are we safe to work in Australia? The system is failing us, not taking our work, our life, our safety seriously.”
She said the sentence revealed a “double stigma” within the justice system around sex and migrant workers.
Gia Green, the manager of Victorian sex worker organisation Vixen, said the industry was “horrified and devastated by the lenient sentence”.
“We cannot help but feel that the sentencing would be more severe if Yuqi and Hyun were not Asian-migrant sex workers,” she said.
