A Victorian man who tricked his wife into travelling to Sudan before taking her children and passport back to Australia has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

After a county court trial, the 52-year-old man in April became the first Victorian convicted of exit trafficking – where someone is coerced, threatened or tricked into leaving Australia against their will.

The man had pleaded not guilty to the charge and denied having deceived the woman, who was abandoned in Sudan for 16 months. The woman cannot be named for legal reasons.

Judge Frank Gucciardo said the man’s offending “required a degree of planning”.

“You treated her as a chattel that could be simply discarded,” he said.

“She was grief-stricken and traumatised by the departure of her children with you.”

The man must serve at least three years and three months in jail before he can be eligible for parole.

He appeared in the county court in Melbourne on Tuesday morning, wearing a grey jumper and beige pants. Gucciardo said the man “intentionally misled” his wife to believe she had a valid visa to return to Australia when they travelled to Sudan in September 2014.

“What you had not told her was, in June 2014, you had withdrawn the visa and her application for a visa would be under threat,” he said.

The man had told her it was for a holiday and later departed Sudan with their children, leaving her stranded for 16 months, the court heard.

Gucciardo said the woman would not have left Australia if she had “known the truth about her visa status”.

The man travelled back to Australia with the pair’s two children, both aged under two, and his wife’s passport, Gucciardo said.

Gucciardo said “depriving the children at this tender age” was an aggravating factor in the offending.

He said the “abrupt separation” from her children had caused the woman “immense physical pain and agony.”

After her husband departed Sudan, the woman contacted the Australian embassy in Egypt and was told her visa had been cancelled, the court heard. After the woman received legal aid and migration support, the Department of Home Affairs issued her a temporary visa, allowing her to travel to Australia at the end of February 2016.

Gucciardo said the man was a well educated and community-minded individual.

But he said the moral culpability of the offending was high and the man lacked remorse and insight into the offending. He said his likelihood of reoffending was low and his chances of rehabilitation were good if he developed insight into his conduct.

During a pre-sentencing hearing in July, the court heard the man’s former wife describe being stranded without her children as “the most devastating experience of my life”.

In a letter read to the court, she said her children had endured “unimaginable suffering” after they were removed without her consent. She said one of her children experiences severe separation anxiety and fears her mother will never return when she leaves.

The man’s barrister, Brett Stevens, argued that the two children were not victims of the offence.

He said at the time of the offence the children did not have separation anxiety and said other circumstances such as family court proceedings that may have contributed to the impact on them were not derived from the offence.

After an arranged marriage in Sudan in 2010, the woman moved to Australia on a partner visa in 2012 and was sponsored by her husband, the court heard. She had their first child in 2012 and the second two years later.

The Australian federal police charged the man in 2022.