When giving birth to her second child, Elise couldn't escape the memories of being snatched from behind and sexually assaulted on a Sydney street years earlier.
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Doctors needed to put her under general anaesthetic in order to break her waters and induce labour.
She also struggled in the lead-up to an intimate medical treatment to initiate the pregnancy.
"Sadly, even the happiest times of my life have been negatively impacted by the sexual assault of Gregory (John) Richardson," she said, in a statement read out in the NSW District Court on Friday.
Elise, a pseudonym, was 15 when Richardson grabbed her from behind, threatened to kill her if she screamed and covered her face near a bowling club in Epping in 1994.
While raping her, the then-26-year-old taunted his victim by telling her: "do you know I know you?"
Acting Judge Peter Berman jailed the former tow truck driver for 10 years for his attacks on three teenaged girls and a 25-year-old woman between 1989 and 2007.
Each of the victims was used for a few moments of Richardson's sexual gratification but left with "significant, distressful consequences for years and years and years", the judge said.
"Women and girls have the right to walk home without fear they'll be set upon by someone like the offender," he said.
Richardson's victim in 1989, dubbed Rebecca, was forced to the ground, shoved in the face and asked if she "liked it" as he raped her.
The attack only ended when Richardson stopped kissing the terrified 16-year-old and told himself "it is wrong".
"She still has nightmares about it and expects she will never fully recover," Judge Berman said.
"No sentence I impose can undo what he has done."
Richardson, now 53, was finally caught in 2018 after police linked his DNA to material left at each of the crime scenes.
Though maintaining to have no memory of the incidents, he pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a minor, sexual assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, aggravated indecent assault of a minor and assault with an act of indecency.
During lengthy interviews with a forensic psychologist, he revealed he'd been repeatedly raped as a child by his father in the 1970s and early 1980s when his mother was being treated for cancer.
He also suffered auditory hallucinations, including from a man calling him a "piece of s***".
Judge Berman accepted both claims as truthful and described Richardson as a "profoundly psychologically damaged" individual with an impaired capacity to reason during the offences.
But that didn't mean the crimes were excused.
"He must have known his conduct was seriously, seriously wrong - attacking vulnerable women and girls as they did what they should be entitled to do, walking home alone," Judge Berman said.
Before announcing Richardson's sentence and his eligibility for parole in August 2025, the judge lay criticism at parliament by pointing out the maximum penalty for the 1989 rape was just eight years.
The same crime committed today can warrant a term of up to 20 years.
Australian Associated Press