South Australian child sex tourist Ruecha Tokputza sentenced to 40 years jail for heinous crimes
Ruecha Tokputza is Australia’s worst child sex predator. The Adelaide man’s crimes have no comparison in legal history — and today he was sentenced to a record jail term for sex offending.
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Adelaide sex tourist Ruecha Tokputza has been jailed for a record 40 years for his abuse of children in Australia and Thailand, both in person and over the internet.
On Friday, District Court Judge Liesl Chapman declared Tokputza to be a “child’s worst nightmare” and “every parent’s horror”.
She ordered that he serve 40 years and three months in prison for breaking both South Australian and Commonwealth laws protecting children, and not be eligible to seek release on parole for at least 28 years.
In sentencing, Judge Chapman said Tokputza’s heinous offending was fuelled by his delusional and aberrant belief that he was helping the children, that they enjoyed his abuse and that they loved him.
She said one only needed to look at the hundreds of videos he recorded while abusing the children to see there was no love in their eyes, only pain.
“You are a child’s worst nightmare,” she said.
“You are every parent’s horror, you are a menace to the community.”
“Unfortunately there are many like you out there — fortunately, you have been caught.”
The punishment places Tokputza, who offended against children and babies in two countries, on par with South Australia’s most infamous mass-murderers.
Double child murderer Dieter Pfennig is serving 60 years, while triple killers Steven Graham Peet and Jason Alexander Downie received 36-year and 35-year terms.
The “bodies in the barrels” serial killers — John Justin Bunting and Robert Joe Wagner — have longer terms, having been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
Tokputza, 31, of Mile End, sexually violated 13 children, some as young as 15 months old, in Australia and Thailand.
He also recorded his crimes to encourage fellow predators to copy his conduct.
Last month, prosecutors said it was “hard to think of more serious offending” than his “simply breathtaking” crimes, deeming him worse than Families SA sex predator Shannon McCoole.
McCoole committed 20 against seven victims over 3 ½ years — Tokputza offended against his 13 victims 51 times over six years.
They said there was “no body of comparison” between Tokputza and any other sex offender in Australian history, requiring a sentence longer than McCoole’s 35-year term.
In a marathon 75-minute sentencing hearing on Thursday, Judge Chapman outlined each of Tokputza’s crimes one by one.
She highlighted “particularly shocking” features including the youth of some victims, and the fact one was “in a nappy, sleeping” when Tokputza abused him.
She said he was caught in possession of 12,500 still images and 650 videos of child exploitation downloaded from the internet.
That figure, however, “does not include” the 414 stills and 251 videos — “some of more than 10 minutes” in duration — he made of his own crimes.
Nor did it include the 844 photos he had of his boyfriend abusing a child in Thailand.
Judge Chapman said a psychologist had confirmed Tokpuzta met the clinical definition of a paedophile and was at “moderate to high risk” of reoffending.
“Your sexual offending was propagated and perpetuated by the misguided and aberrant belief that you were helping the boys by showing them love, care and attention,” she said.
“You said you knew what you were doing was wrong because they were underage, but you didn’t think you were hurting them.
“You said you loved them, and wanted them to love you back … you thought they would be okay because they ‘reacted happily’ to the sexual contact.”
She said she had watched Tokputza’s videos and viewed his online chat logs.
“Frankly, I saw no love on the faces of any of these young, innocent and trusting boys … (your views) are deeply disturbing,” she said.
“There is pain on the face of one boy … the footage is best described as depraved.
“There’s no depiction of ‘love’ as right-minded people know love — rather, it’s all about exploitation, it’s all about you, it’s all about bravado on your part.”
Judge Chapman said Tokputza lived with “distorted beliefs” and had become “desensitised to moral distress” in order to “rationalise and justify” his crimes.
She said his online offending re-victimised the children, and that both it and his overseas crimes had to be punished most severely.
“You don’t get away with it simply because you were not on Australian soil (and) you abused real children to feed this very evil (online) market,” she said.
“There must be denunciation and punishment.”
She said that, were it not for his guilty pleas, Tokputza would have received a 26-year prison term for the SA offences and a 62-year term for the Commonwealth crimes.
“There has been considerable time and the expense of a trial saved by your early guilty pleas,” she said.
“Also, 12 potential jurors and court staff have been saved the ordeal of having to watch these videos and records of your abuse.”
Tokputza will be eligible to seek release on parole from January 2047, when he will be 58 years old.
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