Vile sex offender back before court for latest offence

A 75-year-old man sentenced over a 1990s paedophile ring has been slapped with more jail time after yet another breach of his court orders.

Child sex offender Hendrikus Ruhland has received three months’ jail for possessing a camera. FILE PHOTO: iStock

A man sentenced for his part in a paedophile ring that preyed on schoolboys in the 1990s has received another three months’ prison for possessing a camera.

Hendrikus Joseph Ruhland, 75, was charged with breaching an order under the Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003.

Under the Act he was forbidden from owning any electronic recording device without prior written approval.

After his seventh similar breach, in 2013, he was jailed for six months, Holland Park Magistrates heard yesterday.

He had previously served a 13-year jail term for 98 charges including indecent treatment of a child, after luring truant schoolboys to his southside home.

The then attorney-general applied for Ruhland to be indefinitely sentenced, arguing he would prey on children for the rest of his life, but was released after a judge said he had completed a sex offenders’ program and had reformed.

Ruhland was last month sentenced to four and a half weeks’ jail for wilful damage.

Brisbane Magistrates Court heard at the time that Ruhland scrawled a message on a toilet wall at the Capalaba Park Shopping Centre inviting people of “any age’’ to meet him outside a nearby library for sex.

Hendrikus Ruhland is serving time at Wolston Correctional Centre.

Ruhland, who appeared before Holland Park Magistrates Court on Tuesday via videolink from Wolston Correction Centre, pleaded guilty to breaching the Act.

However, his lawyer Samantha Breach said Ruhland’s partner bought the camera and that police had not found any illegal or concerning images on it.

Ms Breach said Ruhland had asked a Salvation Army officer who visited him in jail to pass on a message to his partner to change the camera battery. The officer then contacted prison staff.

She said the order would have expired the day before the camera was found at a Coopers Plains address on March 7. But it was extended, by consent, to May 10.

Magistrate Robert Turra said while he took into account Ruhland’s early guilty plea it was a serious offence, albeit at the lower end of the offending range.

“You know well the conditions of your supervision order, after having seven like convictions,’’ Mr Turra told him.

“The orders are designed to protect the community against further offending.

“In this instance there’s no suggestion of anything improper on the camera, which was the property of your partner.’’

Mr Turra sentenced Ruhland to three months’ jail, but taking into account time already served gave him immediate parole release.

Ruhland is however still part-way through his prison sentence for the wilful damage charge.