A teenage girl has opened up about the biting and cigarette burn attacks she endured at the hands of a former Scots College student while he was on bail for an array of charges relating to disturbing material involving children and animals.
Ethan Ungerboeck was 20 when he met Ellie*, 16, in June last year, about six months after the Australian Federal Police raided one of his family’s properties in Sanctuary Point, on the NSW south coast.
Police found Ungerboeck while investigating online groups that allegedly trade images of children engaging in sexual acts and self-harm, and charged him with 17 offences relating to possession of child abuse material and bestiality.
Ellie told the Mail that Ungerboeck mentioned the police raid when they met playing the online video game Fortnite but he wouldn’t tell her why he was ‘in trouble’.
They talked all night using headsets and their relationship progressed quickly. Ungerboeck told her that he didn’t like social media – he said he preferred to ‘be in nature’ – and asked if they could meet up the following day.
She was hesitant but agreed because he seemed to understand her mental health struggles – but she had no idea he ‘liked to bite’ and had recently stalked an ex-girlfriend and threatened her with dissection and mutilation.
The next three weeks were bizarre. Ungerboeck bit Ellie so hard half her face went numb, burnt her with a cigarette so badly it got infected and drove her around Sydney insisting they sleep in his car for days at a time.
Ungerboeck eventually pleaded guilty to four domestic violence charges in relation to his treatment of Ellie, but escaped conviction because his lawyer successfully argued that he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression.
Ethan Ungerboeck is pictured during his relationship with Ellie last June
Ethan Ungerboeck (pictured) told Ellie he wanted to quit smoking, before he burnt her with a cigarette
Ungerboeck, who previously admitted to threatening to kill and mutilate another girlfriend if she cheated on him, still has no criminal record
Ellie, who is now 18, said ‘everything was a red flag’ in hindsight, including the fact that he used to make her sneak over the fence to his parents’ $6million Maroubra mansion so they wouldn’t see her on CCTV.
She said he didn’t want his parents to know about her.
While the relationship didn’t last long, Ellie said the time they spent together was intense, to the point where she ‘felt like I was in too deep with him and I didn’t know how to get out of it’.
Their connection was forged during their first Fortnite conversation when he asked what her favourite season was. She told him it was winter, and he immediately asked if it was because she could hide her self-harm scars.
Ellie did have a history of self-harm. ‘I don’t know how he guess it,’ she said.
‘I had just got out of hospital for that, and he somehow deducted that, so I opened up a bit, and he opened up a bit because he used to do it as well.’
When they met up in Burwood, in Sydney’s west, the next day, she quickly realised Ungerboeck wanted more than friendship and he ended up lying on her, and asking her to sit on his lap.
Their relationship became physical later that night after he texted her to say he was bored and asked if she wanted to go stargazing in Otford, near Wollongong.
Ethan Ungerboeck (pictured) bit Ellie three times and burnt her wrist with a cigarette so badly is blistered and became infected
Ethan Ungerboeck is pictured during one of the days-long car trips he went on with Ellie
He picked her up about 10pm and they were out until after 3am because he made a series of physical advances on her in the car.
It was the first of many road trips.
Ellie said Ungerboeck would always use her phone to pick a green area, or a lookout, and they’d sleep in the car overnight, using a gas stove in his car to cook meals, because he didn’t want to go home.
At one stage, they had been sleeping in the car for so long that he took her for a shower at a sports field near Surry Hills.
While he told her that he had an old Nokia flip phone because he didn’t like technology or social media, she later found out his regular phone had been seized by police during the raid.
He didn’t like it when other people were on their phones around him, she said, but he needed her phone to navigate in the car. When the map wasn’t being used, he wanted her to put her phone away.
‘His demeanour started changing and he was getting mean towards me,’ she said.
‘He liked camping and things, but were were always in the car and if I did something wrong with the tent or something, he would sound extremely frustrated and tell me “you’re a bit slow”.’
Ethan Ungerboeck was bailed to his parents’ $6million Maroubra mansion (pictured)
Ethan Ungerboeck is now not allowed to leave his parents’ mansion (pictured) without one of them as an escort
Things got violent when he started biting her ‘out of nowhere’.
‘It wouldn’t be in a sexual way, just when he was drunk or high, he’d just bite me,’ she said.
‘It was on the neck and the wrist and it would always leave a mark or a bruise, and and I’d get paranoid because it was really visible, and he’d be like, “It’s fine, it’s fine.”‘
According to court documents seen by the Mail, the first time it happened was when they were sitting on Ungerboeck’s bed at his parents’ Maroubra home watching YouTube videos on his laptop and he was high on cannabis.
He suddenly sank his teeth into her neck and it was very painful.
She asked what he was doing and tried to push him away, but he remained latched on to her skin for a few seconds before he finally pulled away and ‘giggled excessively’.
Alone in his house except for him, Ellie felt afraid and powerless.
It happened again the next day. They were watching YouTube videos in his bedroom when Ungerboeck – who had again been smoking pot – opened his mouth and sank his teeth into Ellie’s wrist.
Ethan Ungerboeck (with his lawyer) has been charged with 17 alleged offences relating to the possession of child abuse material
Ethan Ungerboeck had his domestic violence charge dismissed. He has no criminal record
Ungerboeck laughed when he saw the deep marks on her wrist.
Two weeks later, he latched onto her neck while they were in a tent at Coogee beach.
‘I felt that one in my head and my face, half my face felt really numb for a while,’ she told the Mail.
‘I got home and the mark was still there on my neck, and I didn’t know why he would do that.’
But the final straw was when he burned her wrist with a cigarette.
Ellie said they were fishing when he was talking about wanting to quit smoking, and she was talking about how she wanted to stop self-harming.
‘I said something about how some people online draw things with cigarette burns. I just said it randomly as a fact and I don’t know how it got to the point where he grabbed my arm and was actually going to do it,’ she said.
‘I was pretty desensitised to the idea of self-harm by then, so when he grabbed my arm I expected him to do it on my forearm, but he did it right over my veins on the inside wrist.’
Ethan Ungerboeck (pictured outside court) escaped conviction after citing his poor mental health
She said he held the cigarette there for a while, before he gave the butt to her.
‘He said, “Whenever I see this [burn] on you, I’ll know not to smoke,”‘ she recounted.
Later that night, Ungerboeck, who would ‘impulsively’ talk to strangers in public, was sitting with a small group of RV travellers, smoking.
‘He was looking at me like he was saying sorry for smoking, and then he’d do it anyway, but I didn’t really care. It was his choice and his sobriety, not mine,’ she said.
The burn ended up blistering. Ungerboeck popped it with a knife, even though Ellie asked him not to. The wound got infected and she went to the doctor for antibiotics.
After that, she was scared and confused, and ended up breaking down to her friends.
Ellie texted Ungerboeck to say she didn’t want to see him anymore, which she was scared to do because he had been violent towards her.
In response, he asked for the phone number of one of the RV travellers they met while camping. They never spoke again.
Ethan Ungerboeck went to Scots College (pictured), a wealthy private boys’ school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs
She was encouraged to go to the police and get an apprehended violence order against him and make a police statement.
In October, Ungerboeck was charged with three counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and one count of common assault.
In court, his solicitor Michael Bowe said he was a ‘reasonably young man’ with a well-documented history of mental illness, whose problems were made worse at school.
Ungerboeck had been bullied so badly at Scots College, where fees reach $56,000 a year, that he avoided other boys in the grounds during breaks and hid in the library.
He had not coped well with the Covid pandemic, and his depression culminated in a suicide attempt, the court was told.
The judge dismissed the charges and ordered Ungerboeck to comply with a treatment plan, including psychiatric appointments and medication for 12 months.
The earlier stalking and intimidation charge against another ex was dismissed in February due to Ungerboeck’s ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, depression, and his youth.
Ungerboeck’s child exploitation material charges will return to Downing Centre Local Court later this month.
*Name has been changed.
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