Tony Edwards: Lalor Park man sentenced for not complying with reporting obligations

A former jailbird and convicted sex offender has been busted for failing to tell the Child Protection Register of his account on website ‘Secret Benefits’.

A former jailbird and convicted sex offender has been busted for failing to tell the Child Protection Register of his account on website ‘Secret Benefits’.

Tony Edwards, 60, appeared before Blacktown Local Court on Monday to be sentenced for failing to comply with his reporting obligations under the Child Protections Act.

The Lalor Park man was jailed in 2011 for various child pornography charges, including accessing and transmitting child abuse material and grooming a child under 16 for sex.

He was released from Long Bay Correctional Centre in 2013 where he was ordered to register on the Child Protection Register for 15 years.

As part of Edwards’ release from jail, he was required to declare to police ‘any email addresses, internet user names, instant messenger user names, chat room user names or any other user name or identity used, or intended to be used, by you, through the internet or other electronic communication service’, court documents stated.

On March 16 this year police attended his Lalor Park home to carry out an inspection under the Child Protection Act. When police looked at his internet history, police observed multiple searches containing the words ‘teen’ and ‘young’.

Police also uncovered an account with Edwards’ picture on the website ‘Secret Benefits’, described online as “a dating site for generous men and attractive women”.

The user name had not been declared to police.

The court heard the 60-year-old had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, was unemployed and lived on his own.

Magistrate van Zuylen sentenced Edwards to a two-year community corrections order. He will remain on the registered sex offender list until January 2028.