10 South Australian child sex offenders to go through court so far in 2023

Day after day, SA’s courts deal with a parade of child sex offenders. So what excuses do they offer for their perverted behaviour?

They come from all walks of life – school teachers, fathers, trusted community members – but these perverts have all preyed on our most innocent with devious crimes.

With dark web platforms significantly increasing, child abusers have more opportunities than ever to prey on the vulnerable.

Detective Chief Inspector Richard Lambert, officer in charge of Special Crimes Investigation Section, said children were accessing the internet at a very young age, often unsupervised and spend long hours using electronic devices.

“There is a normalisation of sexual behaviour online which is also changing young people’s attitude towards sharing explicit content with each other,” he said.

“An ‘online groomer’ who has gained the trust of the child by pretending to be a peer and using fake identities, can quickly gain exploitative imagery by manipulation, and move to further exploiting and blackmailing the victim.”

Insp Lambert said law enforcement officers across the world had a presence online to identify and track offenders.

“Law enforcement agencies remain at the forefront of technology to gain any advantage, networking across the world to enhance the abilities to identify child victims,” he said.

Insp Lambert said children could stay safe online by only accepting ‘friend’ requests from people they know in real life, avoiding sharing private information and never agreeing to meet someone they’ve only known online on their own.

Here are the evil deeds of SA child sex offenders who have gone through court so far this year.

Randall Waters

Randell Waters. Picture: Facebook

An online groomer who pretended he was a 16-year-old boy to force three pre-teen girls into performing gruesome sex acts was jailed for over a decade.

Randall Scott Waters, 52, was told he was at “low risk of reoffending” after being released from jail on similar crimes but turned to the internet to continue his “cruel and manipulative” conduct.

During sentencing, the District Court heard Waters sent an Instagram message to a 12-year-old girl living in another state in 2016.

“You represented yourself to be a 16-year-old boy living in South Australia,” Judge Emily Telfer said.

“The truth is you were at the time a man in your mid-40s living in a granny flat at the back of your parent’s house with convictions for sexual offending against a child.”

The court heard Waters cultivated an online relationship with the victim who came to believe he was her boyfriend.

Waters eventually shifted the communications to a sexual nature and asked the victim to send photos and videos of her naked.

He also began chatting to two of the victim’s friends, who were also aged 12 and in Year 7 at school.

The court heard the girls were forced to perform horrific sexual acts on themselves and each other over the course of a year – including bestiality with their pets, eating their own faeces and drinking their own urine.

When Waters was arrested, police found 1970 horrific child exploitation material files on his phones, including hundreds of the victims.

Waters, of Hackham West, pleaded guilty to multiple offences, including possessing child exploitation material and inciting an indecent act by a child.

Judge Telfer sentenced Waters to 10 years and seven months jail, with a non-parole period of eight years and five months.

The sentence was backdated to November 5, 2021.

Jason Hodgson

Jason Hodgson. Photo: Facebook

Jason Scott Hodgson, 49, was jailed for more than 10 years for the manipulative abuse over a two-year period between 2007 and 2009.

During sentencing on Monday, the District Court heard the victim was aged between 13 and 15 at the time of the offending, while Hodgson was aged 32-34.

The court heard Hodgson, who was already in a relationship at the time, struck up a friendship with the victim after meeting her in the community.

He began texting her daily, before inviting her over to his house and having sexual intercourse with her, in which she suffered considerable pain.

“The following day you purchased a prepaid mobile phone to contact her so that your girlfriend would not know that you were having contact,” Judge Geraldine Davison said.

“You told her to save your number under a false name.”

The court heard Hodgson, who had weekly intercourse with the victim, encouraged her to go on the contraceptive pill so he didn’t have to use condoms.

The Kapunda father pleaded guilty to maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship with a child.

Judge Davison sentenced Hodgson to 10 years and five months jail, with a non-parole period of five years.

Bradley Long

Bradley Long. Picture: Supplied.

The family of a Mount Gambier man who sexually abused two young girls broke down in tears after their worst fears were confirmed and he was imprisoned.

Bradley Tye Long, 20, stood stoic in the dock as Judge Joanne Tracey handed down his five-year, eight-month prison sentence.

The court heard Long had left one of his victims “broken and haunted”, turning to self-harm and contemplating suicide, with the other falling pregnant and eventually suffering a miscarriage.

Long pleaded guilty to one count of maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship with a child, one count of possession of child exploitation material and one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a person under 17.

The court previously heard Long had the intelligence of a 12-year-old and had googled what the age of consent was before sexually abusing one of his victims.

There was a brief overlap between the first and second victims, aged 14 and 16, at the time of the offending with Long encouraging his second victim to sleep at his house following his August 2021 arrest, the court heard.

Long’s family began crying as they heard Long had received a head sentence of five years and eight months in prison with a non-parole period of two years and six months.

Dylan Pedler

Dylan Pedler. Photo: Facebook

A vile predator who plied a child with alcohol and sexually assaulted her was jailed for more than four years.

Dylan Wayne Pedler, 30, forever changed the lives of the victim and her family after he committed the degrading abuse.

During sentencing, the court heard Pedler and another man picked up the 16-year-old victim and her 15-year-old friend from the side of the road in July 2021.

They picked up a carton of Smirnoff Double Blacks and went back to a house.

The court heard drugs were given to the girls but there was no evidence Pedler was present when this happened.

Mr Pedler then followed the “disorientated” victim into a shed behind the house.

“You tried to pull her pants down, she was saying no,” Judge Michael Durrant said.

“You said ‘just let me f*** you’.

“You forcibly turned her around, bent her over a white object … you penetrated her vagina.”

Pedler, of Whyalla, was found guilty by a jury in the Port Augusta District Court in December of three charges of unlawful sexual intercourse.

Judge Durrant sentenced Pedler to four years and seven months jail, with a non-parole period of two years and nine months.

The sentence was backdated to December 2.

Jason and Ralph Burgoyne

One Port Lincoln man has been jailed while another awaits his fate after being found guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse with the same child, who passed away six months after the incident.

Jason Burgoyne, 40, faced trial in the Port Augusta District court charged with two counts of unlawful sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Ralph Burgoyne, 45, pleaded guilty earlier the same day for charges of unlawful sexual intercourse and producing child exploitation material, relating to the same victim.

The court heard the victim visited a Port Lincoln home, occupied by Jason Burgoyne, before engaging in filmed oral sex acts with the two men.

The court heard in February 2022, data files from a Nokia phone were extracted by SA police which contained incriminating Snapchat footage.

Prosecutor Keryn Park told the court that the mobile phone containing the footage belonged to the victim, indicating the child’s ability to unlock the phone for police as proof.

The jury were shown additional videos extracted from the victim’s Snapchat account to demonstrate that they were actively using the app when the unlawful sex occurred.

The court heard the victim tragically passed away six months after the incident and was just 16 years old at the time.

Ms Park asked the jury to consider Jason Burgoyne’s tattoos, which could be seen in the videos presented to the court.

Jason Burgoyne was found guilty of one charge of unlawful sex with a minor and not guilty of the second charge of penetrative sex based on the footage.

He will be sentenced later this year.

Judge Barrett, when sentencing Ralph Burgoyne, noted the vast age disparity between the two.

“This was serious offending by you at the age of 45 against a very vulnerable girl,” he said.

Ralph Burgoyne received a prison sentence of four years and nine months.

Stepdad’s sickening crimes

A man who tied up and sexually assaulted his stepdaughter the night before her fifth birthday, and again abused her years later as “punishment” because she tried to protect her younger sister, will spend at least seven years in jail.

The man, who cannot be named to protect the victim, told the young girl he was “going to play a game” with her before tying her to her bed and abusing her.

About five years later, when the girl was then aged 10, she tried to protect her younger sister from being physically assaulted.

The stepfather hit the girl, then dragged her by her hair to her bedroom and again sexually assaulted her to “teach her a lesson” in a “particularly cruel and depraved incident”.

In sentencing, Judge Geraldine Davison said the man’s “heinous” offending was “manipulating” and “terrifying” for the young girl.

Judge Davison said the girl, who was now aged in her 20s, had developed “a psychosis due to the trauma of the abuse” and suffered night terrors and flashbacks.
She said the offending, which occurred between about 2003 and 2010, was likely to have a lifelong effect on the girl.

The man pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse over the incidents and was sentenced to nine years and seven months jail, with a non-parole period of seven years and eight months.

Andrew Buitenhuis

Andrew Buitenhuis. Picture: The Advertiser

A former council worker and CFS volunteer who abused two young children while working as a Christian youth group leader has been jailed for a decade.

Andrew Buitenhuis, 59, from Mount Barker, abused two nine-year-old children under cover of darkness while playing games like “sardines” and “capture the flag”.

Buitenhuis was arrested decades after he abused the two children in the early 1990s and charged with two counts of maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship with a child.

He stood trial before a jury and was convicted of both charges.

During sentencing on Monday, District Court Judge Anthony Allen said Buitenhuis had been trusted to care for and entertain the children.

The court heard that Buitenhuis does not accept the verdict of the jury and maintains his innocence.

Buitenhuis ran a youth group attached to a Christian church in Fullarton between January 1, 1990 and December 21, 1992.

The jury heard during the trial that Buitenhuis arranged for games to be played at nightfall and would then hide with the victims and sexually assault them.

Buitenhuis was jailed for 10 years with a mandatory non-parole of eight years because of his status as a serious repeat offender.

Malcolm Wardle

Malcolm Wardle. Picture: Supplied

After three years of pursuing, pestering, grooming girls as young as 12 for sex, and paying them via his self-created “online price guide” for abuse, Malcolm Kenneth Wardle was finally in handcuffs.

Asked, by police, why he had committed so many crimes, he replied: “Curiosity, experimentation … I had the money, I asked, they did it … I’m a fool.”

The District Court said Wardle’s blunt self-assessment did not go far enough.

Judge Geraldine Davison told the 22-year-old he was undoubtedly a paedophile, and deserved to spend the next 13 year behind bars.

Wardle, 22, of Morphett Vale, pleaded guilty to 29 charges including both basic and aggravated counts of procuring a child for sexual activity, and to indecent assault.

Between May 2018 and September 2019, Wardle used the Snapchat app to approach 20 girls aged between 12 and 16.

He kept a “price guide”, offering $10 and up for lewd and sexual photos, images and videos of the girls, seven of whom he also abused physically.

Wardle was ordered to serve a non-parole period of 10 years, four months and 25 days.

Pedophile father jailed

A pedophile father’s apology to the daughter he abused for more than 17 months “pales into insignificance” when compared to the abhorrent offending he committed against her, a judge has said.

The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim, pleaded guilty to maintaining a sexual relationship with the child starting when the victim was only three years and four months old.

He also pleaded guilty to almost a dozen offences of producing, disseminating and possessing child exploitation material.

The offending only stopped when specialist police attached to the Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team raided his house in November 2021.

District Court Judge Anthony Allen said he would limit the details of the abuse the man perpetrated against the child during sentencing because of its “gross depravity”.

The offending came to light when police in Queensland identified a man posting child exploitation material in a file entitled “my daughter”.

Officers communicated with the man online and identified him as living in South Australia.

The tip was passed onto local police who raided the man’s home. The child was removed from his care and placed with a foster family.

During sentencing submissions last month, the court heard that the child had been removed from the care of her mother by the Department of Child Protection who found she was “unstable”.

Instead she was placed in the care of her father – who had severe, but at that time undiagnosed, autism spectrum disorder.

Across multiple electronic devices police found images of the child being abused as well as videos and pictures of other children.

The man was sentenced for 14 years for all charges with a non-parole period of 11 years, two months and 13 days.