“This is a serious example of a grooming manner”

Court documents reveal shocking sexually explicit text messages sent to the underage female during police investigation.

A former Grafton man will spend the next 18 months in prison after sending a series of sexually explicit text messages to an underage girl.

A former Grafton man will spend the next 18 months in prison after sending a series of sexually explicit text messages to an underage girl.

Mohamed Zaki Abdul-Majid, 64, was sentenced at Grafton Local Court this month for grooming a child over 14 years, and under 16 years for unlawful sexual activity.

According to Local Court documents, Abdul-Majid worked in the healthcare industry as a disability support worker, predominantly dealing with disabled persons. Although Abdul-Majid had no direct authority over the female victim, he used his position to gain the victim’s trust and breached his registered authority.

“This is a serious example of a grooming manner, with an explicit and graphic nature of desire... and when she doesn’t respond to his manipulation, he resorts to a threat,” the Crown prosecution said during their final submission to the court in May.

In April, 2020, a witness overheard the teenage victim speaking to an unknown male over the phone. Later that day a light blue sedan pulled up out the front of the victim’s address and placed an envelope, addressed to the victim with $70 cash inside, into the letterbox. The witness photographed the vehicle and the male, later identified as Abdul-Majid, and provided the images to police.

When the witness questioned the victim about the male, the teenager disclosed several text message exchanges with him, referring to him as “Zach”. Police completed a forensic analysis of the victim’s phone and a copy of the text exchanges were extracted.

Overtly sexual conversations were discovered wherein Abdul-Majid states, “I wanna come (sic) inside you on this holy Anzac Day” and “you would have been a bit sore this morning if you were beside me, awake with the biggest mongrel throbbing thing and would have grind you deeply,” among other sexual exchanges.

Abdul-Majid also asked the victim to send him naked photographs of herself on several occasions.

The witness and the victim attended Grafton Police Station to report the matter where it was revealed that the teenager first met Abdul-Majid via a Facebook page in late December, 2019.

The pair met in person once when Abdul-Majid agreed to purchase cigarettes for the teenager and arranged to collect her in his vehicle at an agreed location north of Grafton.

Just after 9am on June 25, 2020, police executed a search warrant at the residence of Abdul-Majid, who at the time, was still residing in Grafton, NSW. He was arrested and, during an interview, denied sending all messages of a sexual nature, stating his phone must have been hacked on each of these occasions.

However, Abdul-Majid later made admissions to the offending conduct.

In their final submissions to the court, Abdul-Majid’s defence highlighted that he was of low risk and possibly suffering from age-related dysphoria, which could have been a contributing factor to his actions. As such, Abdul-Majid’s solicitor argued that a prison sentence would be “detrimental given his age, background and with a lack of availability for counselling” once incarcerated.

Abdul-Majid will be eligible for parole in June, 2022.