Christopher Luke Hawk Frantzen: Southport pedophile released from custody after serving 16 months
A disability pensioner aged in his thirties who sought out, received, and shared some of the most vile child abuse material imaginable has been sentenced for his disturbing crimes.
A Gold Coast disability pensioner has hung his head in the dock as a prosecutor read out appalling messages in which the defendant boasted about abusing a young boy whose mum he claimed to have raped.
Southport man Christopher Luke Hawk Frantzen, 35, appeared in Southport District Court on December 9.
He pleaded guilty to a nine-count indictment charging him with offences including making child exploitation material, using a carriage service to solicit and transmit child abuse material, and possessing child abuse material obtained using a carriage service.
The offending occurred over an eight-month period between September 2023, when federal police received intelligence regarding Frantzen’s online activities, and his arrest and remand in pre-sentence custody on July 23 last year at the conclusion of a search warrant.
Crown prosecutor Ayesha Black told the court Frantzen’s offending involved the defendant using the encrypted messaging apps Telegram and MEGA to possess, transmit, and make child exploitation material.
All up, Frantzen was found with more than 500 exploitative images and videos on his devices, most of which depicted girls aged 7–10, although some infants were depicted.
Disturbingly, some of the videos found on his phone depicted pre-pubescent girls being raped by adult males, Ms Black told the court.
Frantzen told arresting officers he “looked at [the offending material] but never asked for it”, but that was a lie because message logs indicated he had asked various other users if he could buy or access child exploitation material from them.
Meanwhile, two conversations Frantzen had were so graphic they satisfied the threshold for making child exploitation material under state legislation.
Frantzen looked visibly uncomfortable and hung his head as Ms Black took the time to read one particular thread onto the public record in full.
The messages, too disturbing to reproduce, involved Frantzen claiming he raped a woman before turning his attention towards her “tiny” son, who was in the next room.
The court was told Frantzen was co-operative with authorities during the search warrant, even providing pincodes to his devices, and he had only a minor criminal history with no offending of a like nature.
Prior to Tuesday’s sentence, he had spent 497 days remanded in pre-sentence custody.
A clinical psychologist’s report tendered to the court concluded Frantzen had a provisional diagnosis of pedophilic disorder, and the risk of recidivism was moderate, although it could be reduced via his participation in targeted sexual offender programs.
Frantzen’s defence counsel told the court his client grew up in a disadvantaged home on Russell Island and became dependent on cannabis and alcohol in his teenage years.
He worked a series of jobs, usually involving manual labour, but due to a degenerative spinal condition, had been on a disability support pension since the age of 27, leading to social isolation.
Judge Nathan Jarro described Frantzen’s offending as “sickening, disgusting, depraved, the lowest of the low”.
He sentenced Frantzen to three and a half years’ imprisonment, suspended after the 497 days already served, for an operational period of five years, as well as three years’ imprisonment with immediate parole release conditional upon the defendant performing two years of probation and entering into a $500, five-year recognisance release order.
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Originally published as Christopher Luke Hawk Frantzen: Southport pedophile released from custody after serving 16 months
