Mario Henry Aliverti: Scout leader jailed for 31 years for child sex offences
A former Scout leader wept into his hands as he was told he would spend much of the rest of his life in prison for a series of child sex offences over more than 20 years. The now 61-year-old abused boys on camps and in the Scout hall with his youngest victim just seven years of age.
Central Sydney
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A former Scout leader wept into his hands as he was jailed for more than 31 years for numerous child sex offences spanning two decades.
Mario “Henry” Aliverti, 61, used his position to abuse boys on camps and even in their own homes with his youngest victim just seven-years-old.
He committed 12 child sex offences including sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 10, aggravated indecent assault and gross indecency.
Several of his victims watched on via video link from their homes on Thursday as he was told he would serve a minimum of 21 years in jail.
“Nine children, now adults, are the victims (of these crimes),” Judge Jane Culver said in Downing Centre District court.
“Nine victims each individually suffered.
“He will serve his sentence as an older man … (but) for the nine victims his offending is not stale.
“Each victim lives with the trauma each day.”
Most of Aliverti’s victims were mostly Scouts who he discovered through his position as Scout leader.
He also assaulted three other boys outside the Scouts between 1993 and 2007.
During his time in the Scouts in south west Sydney in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Aliverti had direct access to children with no adult supervision.
He abused one boy over four years while another was abused over three years beginning when the child was 11.
He would use Scout camps and the certain Scout hall buildings to isolate boys from the group.
He would then perform sex acts on them and make them have sex with him.
The court was told Aliverti would beg for the encounters to continue if his victims resisted.
He would then tell the children to keep their “little secret”.
He even sallied up close to parents, in a bid to get them to trust him so they would allow him to take their children on individual camping trips, where further assaults would take place.
On one occasion, Aliverti took a victim and his brother camping.
The victim woke up to Aliverti performing oral sex on him, as his brother lay asleep next to him.
The victim lay in shock, silent so as not to wake his brother, before going back to sleep.
Another assault happened when he asked a 13-year-old to build canoes with him in a Scout building.
Once inside the building Aliverti pushed him down and assaulted him while he cried. The boy later attempted to take his own life.
Some of the worst offending, the court heard, was when he would enter children’s bedrooms.
Complaints were first raised in 1989 and he was banned from the Scouts shortly after.
However he wasn’t charged until 2016.
When he was first arrested, he tried to blame a victim in one instance, saying “when I woke up, his p**** was in my mouth”.
In relation to another offence, he later told a medical professional: “I don’t see anything wrong with two people having sex when they care for each other...”
Aliverti pleaded guilty to eight offences in relation to his role in the Scouts in November 2019 and the other three offences outside of the Scouts in June 2019, just before each matter was due to go to trial.
The offences included sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 10, aggravated indecent assault and gross indecency.
Judge Culiver read out some of the victim impacts statements, which she said were all “regrettably largely predictable”.
They outlined the sexual assaults as a pivotal moment in the victims’ lives, causing lifelong trauma, confusion, anger, substance abuse, nightmares, difficulty trusting authority, anger, difficulty maintaining relationships, isolation from society, self-harm and more.
“He stole my childhood away from me,” one victim impact statement read.
“The abuse set my life on the wrong course,” it continued.
“Nothing has been more mentally scarring than being molested as a child by someone I trusted,” another said.