SA child sex offender Geoffrey William Moyle abused children while at the same time trying to improve living conditions, says District Court Judge
An Adelaide sex offender who abused children in impoverished countries was being paid to help those very communities out of poverty, a court has heard.
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A child-sex offender who abused multiple girls overseas was employed as an international development officer trying to address poverty, disadvantage and crime, a court has heard.
Geoffrey Moyle’s offending when he was working in South East Asia in numerous roles has set the stage for a landmark case on whether a victim is entitled to compensation.
On Friday District Court Judge Paul Cuthbertson asked whether the offending should be considered offensive and shameful after hearing details of the 47-year-old’s crimes.
“It seems to me that he is an Australian citizen helping people while he is a sort of representative of the Australian people and he is corrupting the young children on a poverty-riven country,” he said.
“Is one warranted in taking offence to that?”
Moyle pleaded guilty to multiple counts of sexual intercourse with a child outside of Australia, as well as possessing child exploitation material.
He was arrested in May 2019 after a USB led Australian Federal Police to identify Moyle in several videos online of him abusing children in South East Asia.
The identity of the some of the victims’ remains unknown and the court heard it was not obvious whether they had been found in local brothels.
On Friday, the District Court heard a victim impact statement from one of Moyle’s victims who was being forced to work in a brothel when she was abused.
The court heard a horrific insight into life in a child brothel in Cambodia with the 12-year-old victim saying three quarters of her clients were white, foreign men.
The young woman was sold to the brothel by a stranger and kept there for a year.
She said the woman who ran the brothel, who she named “Lady Boss”, threatened to take her to police if she did not please the customers.
“I felt like I was a dead body with no value for anyone,” she said.
On two occasions she was taken to see Moyle at a hotel. She said Moyle had two cameras set up in the hotel room.
She asked him not to film and he said the cameras were off. But during the subsequent abuse the victim noted that Moyle did not say anything and avoided turning his face to the camera.
“I did not want to be filmed and was terrified that someone might see photos of me,” she said.
The young woman eventually escaped the brothel and provided a victim impact statement to police via a translator.
The victim was among six young girls who Moyle abused overseas between 2002 and 2005.
At the same time he was working to improve conditions in several poverty-stricken counties and went on to work on crime-reduction campaigns specifically targeted at protecting women and children.
Heath Barklay QC, for Moyle, said the offending was serious but that his client had done good work too.
“He has done good things for people who are struggling,” he said.
“Although he has done a lot of wrong, he has also done a lot of right as well.”
Moyle posted some of the videos of his abuse of the children online in 2010.
Mr Barklay said Moyle had a problem with sexual deviancy that went some way to explaining why he posted the material online.
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