Operation Arkstone: child abuse material network kingpins to be sentenced

A NSW childcare educator and his boyfriend who abused young children and then shared the vile videos online before a massive Australian Federal Police crackdown will soon learn their fates.

A NSW childcare educator and his boyfriend who committed some of the most vile, protracted child abuse ever uncovered by the Australian Federal Police will soon learn their fate.

The childcare educator and his boyfriend were netted in 2020 by the AFP’s Operation Arkstone, which smashed a domestic online network of child sex offenders.

They were charged with sexually abusing a number of children over several years, photographing and recording the abuse, and distributing it to an online pedophile network.

The offenders cannot be identified, as the childcare educator committed crimes against infants and toddlers at his workplace, and the boyfriend against children known to him.

The highly invasive sexual crimes – which are too distressing and graphic to repeat – were committed against babies aged nine months up to children aged 17.

At Sydney District Court on Thursday, Judge Sarah Hopkins described the pair’s commitment to maximising their sexual gratification through the offending.

The pair preyed on children known to them over a number of years.

“A number of the offences were committed using various degrees of physical force or other forms of coercion or incentivisation,” Judge Hopkins said.

“Other offences occurred while the victims were asleep or playing computer games – whatever the means by which it occurred, it was dehumanising treatment of their victims as play things, being positioned for the best camera angles or for the most gratification.”

The childcare educator and the boyfriend are now facing years in jail, with Judge Hopkins to give her judgment next Tuesday.

Judge Hopkins outlined the pair’s grim history leading up to the offending – including that both had themselves been victims of horrific child sexual abuse.

The childcare educator, who is in his 30s, had been repeatedly sexually abused by family members and subsequently by a primary school teacher in a particularly egregious fashion.

“The alleged perpetrator became violent and degrading,” Judge Hopkins said.

“(The childcare educator) was spat on, choked, gagged and blindfolded, he was filmed and had seen (videos of) himself online.”

The boyfriend, who is in his 20s, was sexually abused by family members when he was just three, and again when he was seven.

He had also been disowned by his father due to his sexuality, and had suffered family violence from his mother’s new partner.

The pair distributed videos of the abuse they committed to an online network.

The childcare educator accepts he has a pedophilic disorder, while the boyfriend reportedly struggles with distinguishing between sexual interest in children and an interest in sexual masochism.

Judge Hopkins gave extremely limited weight to the boyfriend’s submission he had offended due to fears he would be dumped or the childcare educator would commit suicide if he did not comply with the abuse.

“Leading up to and during the period of offending, (the boyfriend) had low self esteem, and partnering with (the boyfriend) was proof he could be loved,” Judge Hopkins said.

Both offenders have been repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted since they have been on remand, with the boyfriend now prescribed prophylactic HIV medication as a result.

Judge Hopkins also acknowledged the pair had admitted to certain offences that would otherwise have not been detected due to an absence of complaints by some victims, and that they had provided pin codes to their devices to assist police with their investigation.

The sentences will be handed down on May 7.

Operation Arkstone is one of the Australian Federal Police’s biggest every crackdowns on child sexual abuse.