Austin Allan Hughes leaves Silverwater Prison in 2009.
Port Macquarie Local Court has sentenced child killer Austin Allan Hughes to 200 hours of community service for breaching his bail conditions.
The 38-year-old was sentenced yesterday after he pleaded guilty to failing to comply with reporting conditions.
Hughes, who changed his name to Blain Lopez Smith, was convicted of bashing his girlfriend’s six-year-old son, John Ashfield, to death in Nowra in 1993. He was sentenced to a minimum 14 years in jail the following year. Hughes, who was 20 at the time, and John’s mother, Gunn-Britt Ashfield, bashed the boy over several hours in front of his siblings at their home.
In the prolonged attack, John was kicked, punched and had his head placed against a phone book, which was hit with a hammer.
Pleading for mercy, John was also beaten with a curtain rod, shoved into a cold shower and then had his head smashed on the tile wall repeatedly, all of which was witnessed by his four siblings.
John died the following day in hospital. Hughes was granted parole under strict conditions from Silverwater Prison in 2009.
However, police were alerted when Hughes moved in with a woman and her two children at Kempsey, on the NSW North Coast.