Man charged with stalking women after they left early-morning gym session

He entered pleas of guilty to two counts of stalking, committing an indictable offence while on bail and refusing an oral fluid test.

Prosecutor Leading Senior Constable Deryn Boote told the court Mr Vanderdonk followed a woman and her daughter when they left a Seymour gym at 6am on April 22.

Mr Vanderdonk flashed his lights constantly at the woman as he drove behind her, Leading Sen Constable Boote said.

The court was told he also pulled up as if to overtake, but instead drove alongside the woman’s vehicle, until she braked and he overtook her.

Mr Vanderdonk only stopped following the woman after he was stopped at railway line boom gates, Leading Sen Constable Boote said.

Police allege the accused then drove back to the same gym and followed a second woman when she left after a class.

Leading Sen Constable Boote said Mr Vanderdonk followed the woman along the Goulburn Valley Hwy, pulling up beside her on the wrong side of the road, before drifting back behind her, all the way to Avenel.

The court heard Vanderdonk, a career truck driver, also repeatedly flashed his car lights at the woman.

Police allege Mr Vanderdonk also drove past the woman’s home slowly when she arrived home, before leaving when her husband came out of the house.

Leading Sen Constable Boote said the woman was “extremely scared, and fearful of her safety and was scared he might kill her”.

She also told the court the first victim had been too scared to drive home while he was following her and had continued to drive around town.

Mr Vanderdonk told police in an interview that he was “just going for a drive” and that he didn’t think the women would be scared that he was following them, Leading Sen Constable Boote said.

She also said Mr Vanderdonk was on a community corrections order for stalking when these charges of stalking were laid.

Mr Vanderdonk’s solicitor Laurence Waugh told the court the alleged offending occurred when his client had relapsed into methamphetamine use on his birthday two days earlier.

He said Mr Vanderdonk had a long-standing drug use problem and methamphetamine use “sometimes resulted in sexual dysfunction”.

“Although the women could not know this, he is not a violent sexual predator, rather a lonely man who, when he uses methamphetamines, behaves in a sexually dysfunctional fashion,” Mr Waugh said.

The defence argued that there was a “very real possibility” there would be a delay of several months in Mr Vanderdonk’s matter finalising.

Magistrate Bernard FitzGerald refused bail saying the stalking charges were very serious.

“You were following not one, but two women,” he said.

He also noted it was “precisely the type of offending” that had led to the community corrections order he was already on.

Mr Vanderdonk was remanded in custody to next appear in court in mid-May.