NAMED: Drug trafficker offered underage girls drugs for sex

A Southern Downs drug dealer admitted to having sex with a 14 year-old girl and once supplied an 11-year-old boy with marijuana.

The now 23-year-old admitted to trafficking drugs in Stanthorpe for 12 months.

A DRUG TRAFFICKER had preyed on underage girls offering them drugs and money for sex, the Toowoomba Supreme Court has been told.

Josepha Scopelliti-Seaton, 23, had also twice supplied cannabis to an 11-year-old boy, the court heard.

His criminal activities came to light after he was stopped by police as he walked past the Stanthorpe Police Station with his then 34-year-old girlfriend.

The then 21-year-old had just met with his parole officer up the street and was out of jail just five days when police who stopped him found he had in his underpants a glasses case which contained small amounts of meth, ecstasy and cannabis, Crown Prosecutor Mark Green told the court.

However, it was a search through his mobile phone text messages that alerted police that he had been trafficking drugs in the Stanthorpe area for 12 months.

It was during the subsequent investigation that police learnt of the three 14-year-old girls who had been procured by Scopelliti-Seaton with hundreds of messages coaxing them to have sex with him.

He had also asked one of the 14-year-old girls to help get him more customers and to sell 50 ecstasy tablets for him.

Scopelliti-Seaton had used Facebook Messenger to send photographs of his erect penis and images of adults having sex which were accompanied by explicit suggestions of what he wanted to do sexually with each girl.

Mostly, the girls rejected his approaches but he had supplied them drugs.

One of the girls had only turned 14 two weeks prior, the court heard.

Scopelliti-Seaton had found one of the girls drunk at a party and had continued to give her drinks, Mr Green said.

So drunk she could hardly walk, Scopelliti-Seaton said he would take her home in a taxi but instead he took her to his place.

The girl later told police she had sat on the bed, her vision blurred, and saying she wanted to leave.

She woke the next morning in bed beside Scopelliti-Seaton, her shirt undone and her shorts off.

Scopelliti-Seaton admitted to police he had sex with the 14-year-old girl.

Justice Peter Callaghan said the defendant was being sentenced on that charge on the grounds though the girl was so drunk she couldn't consent, Scopelliti-Seaton had acted under the impression she was consenting.

Scopelliti-Seaton's mother, brother and grandparents sat quietly in the public gallery of the court as Mr Green conveyed the case facts to the court.

Justice Callaghan sentenced Scopelliti-Seaton to eight years in jail but declaring the 22 months he had already spent in custody as time served, ordered he be eligible for parole from November 1 this year though it would be up to the Parole Board when he was released from jail.

Originally published as NAMED: Drug trafficker offered underage girls drugs for sex