Aram Barsamian to be sentenced for child grooming and child abuse material
The unspeakably evil crimes of a Sydney traffic controller who directed a little girl to make disgusting child abuse material through Snapchat have been unveiled in a new bid to lock him up.
Penrith
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Warning: graphic.
A Sydney traffic controller made an eight-year-old girl call him “Daddy” and pose in explicit ways as he used her to make despicably stomach-churning child abuse material through Snapchat, a court has heard.
Aram Barsamian pleaded guilty to the aggravated use of a child under 14 to make child abuse material and two counts of possessing child abuse material after police connected him to a Snapchat account which had exchanged dozens of images with an eight-year-old girl.
Barsamian was arrested on January 6, just two weeks after a distressed father contacted police when he discovered his daughter had been exchanging explicit images and videos with the account nicknamed “Daddy”.
A raid of Barsamian’s Ryde address uncovered two phones, a hard drive, four USBs, a tablet and a computer tower which collectively contained 1905 child abuse images and videos.
The court has been provided with explicit details of what the material depicts – and it is far too graphic, violent and distressing to be repeated.
Of those images and videos, 80 depict the eight-year-old girl Barsamian abused through Snapchat.
The directions he gave the child, the language he used with her, and the ways in which she responded are likewise too unspeakably vile to publish.
For months, Barsamian had been permitted to be in the community on bail while his matters were on foot.
His father had offered up his $2.5 million home as security to guarantee Barsamian would not flee the jurisdiction before he was granted bail at Parramatta Bail Court in January.
On Wednesday, that came to an end, as Judge Sophia Beckett granted the Crown’s detention application and Barsamian was led into the cells at Penrith District Court.
Under legislation passed in June 2022, the Crown is entitled to apply for an offender’s bail to be revoked by the court if they have pleaded guilty to a serious offence in circumstances where full-time imprisonment is a foregone conclusion.
Through his solicitor, Barsamian attempted to avoid being taken into custody on the submission he was engaged with a psychologist who specialised in child abuse perpetrators and separately required gall stone surgery.
Judge Beckett said health care and counselling could be provided to Barsamian in custody and she revoked his bail.
Barsamian did not react when he was led into the cells by Corrective Services officers, blowing his mother a kiss before he disappeared.
Outside court, the child victim’s grandmother confronted his mother, saying: “I know you’re the mother, but I’m the grandmother, and he has to go to jail for what he did” before storming away.
The grandmother had earlier wept as Judge Beckett read onto the record the most grievous details of Barsamian’s offences against her granddaughter, and the horrific, appalling nature of the abusive material uncovered on his devices.
Barsamian is facing a maximum potential sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment for the most serious charge of the aggravated use of a child under 14 to make child abuse material.
He will be sentenced at Penrith District Court on March 8.
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