A butcher who drove his former partner into the Lerderderg State Park and told her to start digging her own grave with a shovel, has been jailed for six months.
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Graham Patten told the mother of his two children she was not coming out of the forest alive during the terrifying ordeal on May 26, 2015.
It occurred after he had found out she had been communicating with another man.
Although petrified and crying on the ground, the woman refused to start digging her own grave and compared Patten to serial killer Ivan Milat.
The 32-year-old was sentenced at the County Court in Ballarat on Friday after a jury found him guilty of making a threat to kill earlier this month.
The court was told Patten had arranged a trip with his former partner but she became concerned when he drove further into the Lerderderg State Park.
He became angry and was swearing in the car before he broke the front window with his fist.
Patten then forced the woman out of the car, produced a shovel she had never seen before and told her to "start digging your own grave. You are not coming out of here alive".
The court was told the woman refused to dig and told Patten to leave, but he ordered her to get back in the car.
In a victim impact statement, the woman said the incident had affected her emotionally, mentally and physically.
She suffers from panic attacks, lives in fear, constantly looks over her shoulder to make sure she is not being followed and finds it hard to drive past the state park.
"I am afraid of Patten and what he could do to me," she says in the statement.
Judge Michael McInerney described Patten's offending as planned, deliberate and an outrageous reaction to his former partner.
"It was a performance within the car which was aggressive, punitive and deliberate," the judge said.
The court was told Patten had said his former partner forced him to snap but Judge McInerney disagreed.
"Of course she didn't (cause him to snap). What caused him to snap was his inability to control his own emotions and his inappropriate reaction to his ex-partner exercising her own independence," Judge McInerney said.
"You are an angry person. You have a gross and outdated attitude to women. You need to change your attitude immediately otherwise serious jail is going to be imposed upon you."
The judge said he could not impose anything other than an immediate term of imprisonment. He said the 10-year maximum penalty for the crime demonstrated its seriousness.
Patten was sentenced to six months in jail and a three-year community corrections order with 200 hours of unpaid community work.
He had pleaded not guilty to making a threat to kill.