Couple accused of planning and enacting abuse of woman’s five-year-old daughter face more charges, are refused bail
A couple accused of planning and abusing the woman’s five-year-old daughter are behind bars after being charged with more offences. It means the man is now out of the community.
Police & Courts
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A man and a woman accused of planning and perpetrating the sexual abuse of the woman’s five-year-old daughter are behind bars after being refused bail in the Magistrates Court.
The man, 38, and woman, 41, from the northern suburbs, were charged earlier this year with planning the exploitation of the child but were arrested on Monday evening on charges of persistent sexual abuse and indecent assault.
Both sets of charges related to alleged offending in 2018 and 2019. In the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Monday, a prosecutor labelled the alleged offending as one of the most serious examples of its kind.
“We have a mother who is alleged to have willingly put her young child in harm’s way and had willingly participated in her exploitation, along with her partner who has a confessed sexual interest in young children,” the prosecutor said.
The identity of the couple is suppressed to protect the identity of their alleged victim.
The man, who is charged with the majority of the offending, had already been released on home-detention bail by a magistrate.
The court heard the magistrate had been told more charges were imminent but still released the man on bail. The man’s lawyer maintained his client should be released again because he had been compliant with the bail conditions.
The woman tried to follow her partner’s application and was scheduled for the final part of her bail application on Monday.
Those plans were thrown into disarray when she was arrested in her cell at Adelaide Women’s Prison on Monday.
She also applied for bail on Monday. Chief Magistrate Judge Mary-Louise Hribal refused both applications, citing the seriousness of the charges and the strength of the prosecution case.
The man was first identified in an online sting in which he had been communicating with an undercover federal police officer. In those conversations, he allegedly admitted abusing the young girl.
When he was arrested the first time in November last year, police allegedly found a naked photo of the victim on his phone.
Police approached the young girl’s mother, who is accused of admitting to officers that she had taken the photo and sent it to her partner.
The court heard that messages from the pair’s phones show the couple planned the abuse of the girl in horrifying detail.
The child was interviewed in April and police will allege her evidence shows that the planned abuse detailed on the phone was carried out against the young victim.