Andrew James Sargent: Central Coast man sent sexually explicit material police posing as teenage girl

A Central Coast man who sent sexually explicit material to police officers posing as a 14-year-old girl tried to justify his actions, a court has heard.

A Central Coast man who engaged in sexually explicit conversations with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl has tried to justify his actions saying that it didn’t seem real.

Andrew James Sargent, 42, is set to be sentenced over charges of use carriage service to send indecent material to person under 16 and attempt to use carriage service to engage in sexual activity with child.

Mr Sargent appeared via audio visual link from jail in Gosford District Court on Friday for his sentence submissions and was wearing a mask and plastic coverings over his clothes.

Andrew Sargent has been in custody since his arrest in September 2020. Picture: Facebook

He has been in custody since his arrest on September 2 2020 after sending explicit messages, videos and images to what he thought was a 14-year-old girl.

The girl turned out to be detectives posing as a teenage girl who had been engaging with Sargent since May 2020.

At his first court appearance following his arrest, the court heard Mr Sargent “made full admissions he sent videos and images of sexual acts”.

During sentence submissions on Friday, a sentence report tendered to the court stated that Sargent denied any “sexually depraved thoughts”.

Sargent sent sexually explicit material to what he thought was a girl aged 14. Picture: Facebook

“Mr Sargent provided justification for the offending saying it did not seem real as it was online,” the court heard.

Judge Tanya Bright said this line of thinking “shows no insight” into the offending.

“Why would you provide justification?” she said.

“He thought he was communicating with a 14-year-old child.”

Mr Sargent’s defence lawyer said the number and duration of contacts between Sargent and the “victim” could be described as “average” with the last interaction occurring on July 13 2020.

Sargent will be sentenced in Gosford District Court. Picture: David Swift

He said a matter of significance to the court was that there was only one “single believed victim”.

“There was a single person rather than the offender communicating with multiple people,” he said. “There was no concrete attempt to arrange any meeting.”

He said there was nothing about Sargent’s circumstances, including no prior criminal history, that showed he did “this kind of thing habitually”, also indicating there was no child abuse material found on him at the time of his arrest.

“The fact that Mr Sargent recognised the inappropriateness of his conduct … admitted it and assisted police is of significance as well,” he said.

The court heard Sargent felt disgusted in his actions and expressed remorse.

The matter was adjourned for further sentence submissions on August 19.