Depraved rapist father sentenced to life in prison

Dressed in knee socks and a blue button-up shirt, the Townsville man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victims, sat in the dock as details of his disturbing crimes emerged.

Opening sentencing in the Townsville District Court on Monday morning, Crown prosecutor Monique Sheppard said the most serious of the 87 charges against the man was the rape of his own daughter, referred to as “L”.

“The offence against her was indeed so serious, so heinous, so deliberate and so appalling that a conviction of the maximum penalty is justified,” Ms Sheppard said.

In 2020, a woman received disturbing messages from the man and reported him to the police. During a search of his property, authorities found a mobile phone, which he immediately “distanced himself from,” the court was told.

During the search, police discovered children’s underwear and still images from video recordings showing the man raping his daughter with his fingers, penis and other objects until she was 20 months old, Ms Sheppard said.

She said the images confirmed 11 separate instances in which the man sexually abused the child, but the full extent of his offending was unknown and the man had refused to tell police where the videos were stored.

The court was told that in one of the cases, the man filmed himself attacking his daughter in the changing room of what was believed to be a toilet complex at a Townsville shopping centre.

Police also found pictures of the man’s son, identified as Z, who was born a week after his daughter to another woman he also met on the same dating website, the court said.

Prosecutors said the man would force his son to rape his daughter and film it.

Ms Sheppard said the man had sent the images of the abuse to users on the Kick app and also made confessions of his depraved behaviour. For example, he told one user he wanted to have a sexual relationship with a child “as young as possible, one day old, one week old, as soon as possible”.

The court was told that L’s mother met the man online and discovered during her pregnancy that the man had a strange fetish and sought legal help to ensure her daughter’s protection at birth.

A victim impact statement written by L’s mother and read in court said: “His family signed a commitment to supervise them and him, so attorneys allowed him to continue to have supervised visits.

“I had to hire a private investigator to prove that his visits were unsupervised and that I had enough evidence to stop the visits.

“L came home from these unsupervised visits upset and crying, with redness in her genital area, and crying in pain. She said Daddy had touched her (her genitals) and pointed at them when I changed her diaper.

“Communication, trust, honor, truthfulness, loyalty, respect and family were all words that had very important meaning in my life, destroyed by a father’s animalistic lust for his own daughter.”

In her victim impact statement, the mother described the lasting effects of the crimes on her daughter. For example, she was unable to show affection to other family members or friends, had nightmares, and had spoken about suicidal thoughts even as a child.

Snapchat invitation for woman to have sexual relationship with his son

In another case, a woman who had a brief sexual relationship with the man after reconnecting online contacted police after receiving disturbing messages from him, prosecutors said.

Ms Sheppard said the man messaged the woman on Snapchat, offering to come over and have a sexual relationship with his young son.

“He suggested that she come over and have ‘fun’ with him. The child would be there and there would be no accusations,” she said.

Based on this report, the police initially searched his property.

The court was informed that both L’s and Z’s mothers had forbidden him from having any contact with the children the previous year.

“She woke up and found him in her apartment”

Shortly before, the man had been in a relationship with a younger woman to whom he gave methamphetamine for sex; that woman had a 17-month-old daughter, Ms. Sheppard said.

According to the Crown, the man visited the woman’s home uninvited and sometimes she would wake up to find him in her apartment.

On one particular night, the man gained entry to her apartment while she was unconscious on the living room floor and filmed himself sexually abusing her before turning his attention to the child, who was also sleeping, Ms. Sheppard said.

She said he continued to film the subsequent sexual abuse of the child, some of which was what police discovered when they searched his property in connection with the previous crime.

Through further investigation, police confirmed that two other young girls had been filmed and sexually abused or forced to perform sexual acts. When authorities questioned the man, he refused to provide information about the girls’ identities. However, police later found that the girls were the daughters of a woman to whom the man had sold marijuana, the court said.

In his summary of the offence, Judge Gregory Lynham also addressed the animal cruelty charges against the man, telling the court that the man forced a woman to have sexual intercourse with a dog and filmed himself doing so.

A “social outsider”

Legal Aid Queensland defence lawyer Claire Grant said the man, who had no previous convictions, was a “social outcast” while completing his schooling.

“He did not have a happy childhood, he had arguments with his father and felt like an outsider in his family,” Ms Grant said.

“Since the charges were brought, his family and friends have turned their backs on him completely. This may not be surprising given the severity of his behavior, but at the end of the day, he is still human.”

She described the man’s mental health history, explaining that he had sought mental health services from a young age and began self-medicating with illicit substances in his thirties.

Ms Grant said the man had stopped using services after being released from a rehabilitation centre and had consumed a “cocktail of substances” including methamphetamine, LSD, ecstasy, ketamine and GHB.

The court was told that the man allegedly had no memory of his crime. The defence counsel advised the court to consider his early admission of guilt as a sign of remorse and to seek a prison sentence of 20 years rather than life.

“The cost to the state of Queensland would have been many weeks of contentious court proceedings,” Ms Grant said.

However, as Judge Lynham concluded his sentencing on Tuesday morning, he said he rejected the notion that the man’s guilty plea indicated any sign of remorse for failing to assist police with their investigation and for lying to them.

“Your offence can only be described as a reprehensible breach of trust,” said His Honour.

“Disgusting, predator”

As Judge Lynham read his remarks to the court, the man sat on his hands and faced away from His Honour.

“Your offence was not inferred from your own confessions but from the images found,” said Judge Lynham.

“It is claimed that your drug addiction has impaired your memory, a claim I reject.

“Other evidence showed that you were fully aware of your conduct. You admitted your offence to other users and even sent images to people who had not asked for such material.”

“It was abhorrent and falls into the worst category of its kind,” said His Honour.

“You took advantage of the situation of mothers with whom you had a short-term relationship to abuse their children.

“You are a predator.”

The man pleaded guilty to 87 charges, including rape, indecent treatment of a child under 12 years of direct parentage, zoophilia, production, promotion and possession of child exploitation, burglary and drug trafficking.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment – ​​he showed no reaction.