Grandmother jailed for allowing her granddaughter to be abused by paedophile Shane Alan Hartley
WHEN an Adelaide grandmother’s new boyfriend revealed he was sexually obsessed with little girls, she didn’t call the police — she took her 20-month-old granddaughter to him. What happened next was described by a judge as “unspeakable and abhorrent”.
WHEN an Adelaide grandmother’s new boyfriend revealed he was sexually obsessed with little girls, she didn’t call the police — she took her 20-month-old granddaughter to him and watched as she was abused.
The horrifying sequence of events — described by a District Court judge as “unspeakable” and “abhorrent” — resulted in the grandmother being jailed for a minimum of four years and four months, despite her lawyer arguing for a suspended sentence.
Her paedophile partner, who also owned a huge collection of child exploitation material and would coerce underage girls on social media to send him nude pictures, will spend at least 10 years and two months behind bars.
Shane Alan Hartley, 35, was sentenced to a total of just over 13 years in prison for his role in the abuse of the child, as well as distributing child exploitation material to at least 95 different paedophiles from around the world.
He was the first person in South Australia to be charged under Carly’s Law — new laws to target predators who lie about their age online to groom their victims following the murder of Adelaide girl Carly Ryan in 2007.
But those charges were upgraded to more serious Commonwealth offences.
The 47-year-old woman, whose name is suppressed to protect the identity of her granddaughter, was charged with gross indecency for her part in the abuse of the girl, as well as creating and disseminating child exploitation material.
Judge Liesl Chapman described the pair’s actions as “nothing less than abhorrent”.
“Who could have thought a grandmother could let those things be done to her grandchildren?” Judge Chapman asked.
“Yours was the grossest abuse of trust that can be imagined.”
The pair met around Easter 2017 and begun exchanging messages over social media.
Hartley told the older woman he had a sexual interest in young girls and repeatedly asked for images of her grandchildren.
The grandmother readily agreed and sent him sexually explicit photos of the two girls, aged 20 months and under 12 months.
Judge Chapman said in August 2017, the grandmother took the 20-month-old to Hartley’s home in Adelaide’s northern suburbs where she was abused in a way that meant she now “wakes screaming with night terrors, has a violent reaction to nappy changes (and) refuses to enter a room that males are in”.
The grandmother later claimed to a psychologist that she had saved the girl from being further abused — but Judge Chapman said she did not believe this account of the situation.
“Your offending in relation to the act of gross indecency takes your criminal conduct to another level,” Judge Chapman said.
“What you did by taking your grandchild around to Mr Hartley is really unspeakable.
“The grossest breach of trust, not only in relation your own daughter but in relation to your own infant granddaughter, is immeasurable.
“In a premeditated way, you took that child to Mr Hartley, knowing that she was going to be sexually abused.”
Judge Chapman said the parents of the girl were not to blame at all for the actions of the grandmother.
“They were entitled to place their absolute trust in you, as a biological grandparent of their two children, to care for those two children,” Judge Chapman said.
Hartley, who was already on the sex offenders’ register at the time, was arrested on August 23, 2017.
Police discovered hundreds of videos and images of child exploitation material as well as a personal messaging app linking him with 95 paedophiles from around the world.
They also found messages to a woman in New South Wales who sent him 120 images of her nine-year-old daughter over a two-month period.
Police found evidence Hartley had been unsuccessfully posing as a teenage boy to try and get underage girls to send him naked photos.
Judge Chapman sentenced Hartley to more than 13 years in prison but took a year off the penalty for his testimony against a paedophile he had been communicating with in Canada.
He was declared a serious repeat offender.
The grandmother was sentenced to five years, four months and 13 days in prison with a non-parole period of four years and four months.
She will eligible for parole in December 2021.