Troubled Home and Away star Felix Dean launches foul-mouthed tirade at a judge after being jailed for assault at Sydney tobacconist shop

A former Home and Away actor has left a courtroom stunned after launching a blistering verbal attack on the judge who had just sent him to prison.

Felix Dean, best known for playing VJ Patterson on the Australian soap, made no attempt to hide his fury when Judge John Sfinas handed down a 12-month jail sentence over an assault involving a shop worker.

Appearing via video link, Dean launched into a series of expletive-laden insults, accusing the judge of getting the facts wrong and insisting he had not physically assaulted the employee.

'You know full well there's nothing on camera, so how is it a f***ing serious assault, I didn't even touch him,' he yelled.

'I didn't even touch him so shut your f**king f**got dog mouth, you're a c**ksucker and you know it.'

He continued his attack, calling Judge Sfinas a 'putrid maggot judge' and repeatedly demanding that he stop speaking. 

The astonishing scenes eventually forced a court officer to terminate the video connection, cutting Dean off mid-rant.

The outburst followed the judge's decision to lock the former television star up for 12 months, with a minimum of seven months to be served before he could be considered for release.

Dean's latest brush with the law stemmed from what began as an $11 theft at a Potts Point tobacconist.

At around 4.45am on July 8, he entered the CTC Tobacconist on Darlinghurst Road while an employee was preparing to close the premises.

He allegedly helped himself to two protein shakes from a refrigerator, worth a combined $11, and stuffed them into his backpack without paying.

When the worker challenged him, Dean punched him twice with a closed fist, hitting him in the face and the back of the head.

He then left the store.

The employee would later spot Dean outside the same business nine days after the incident, at around 3.30am. He had reportedly been standing there for about an hour before the worker contacted police.

Officers subsequently arrested Dean and found 0.56 grams of methamphetamine in his jacket.

During sentencing, Judge Sfinas described Dean's conduct as 'egregious'.

His 12-month sentence was backdated to the date of his arrest, meaning he was due to be released on February 16. He will be eligible for parole after serving seven months.

Dean was just ten when he got his big break on Home and Away, acting alongside Ada Nicodemou as her on-screen son from 2007 to 2014 on the long-running soap.

However, the former child star's life has taken a turn for the worse and he has endured a public battle with drugs that has seen him in and out of prison.

He was last jailed in 2024 after crashing his Toyota HiLux while driving with methamphetamine in his system in Sydney's Matraville.  

Dean was fined $250 and disqualified from driving for four months over the offence, after pleading guilty to drug driving. 

Dean is now the third former Home and Away actor to have been sent to prison in less than a decade.

In March 2018, Martin Peter Lynes, who played villain Adam Sharpe on the soap between 2012 and 2014, was sentenced to five years behind bars for aggravated sexual assault. 

He was handed a non-parole period of two-and-a-half years.

More recently, Orpheus Pledger, best known for playing Mason Morgan from 2016 to 2019, was jailed for 12 months in September 2025  after breaching a court order by returning to the home of a woman he had previously assaulted and threatening to kill her.

Pledger had previously been sentenced over the violent attack, which saw him drag the woman to the ground by her hair and stomp on her head.