Chris Pedersen: IT professional, former drummer sentenced for grooming

A married father working at a major bank who felt “trapped” and “under stimulated” in lockdown tried to groom what he thought was an underage girl online.

A married father and IT professional working at a major bank who felt “trapped” and “under stimulated” in lockdown has been sentenced for grooming an underage girl on Skype.

Christopher Carl Pedersen, 61, struck up an online conversation on a social networking site with a girl who told him she was aged 14 in July last year. In reality, the ‘girl’ was a police officer.

The St Ives man, who used the profile name ‘ausdad’, asked the ‘girl’ if she was home alone and if she often chatted to older men.

Pederson spoke to the underage girls on Skype.

The court heard he swapped selfies and complimented the girl as being “very cute” and “hot”, before asking about her masturbation habits and revealed that he was “kinda horny”.

When he was told the ‘girl’ hadn’t ever touched herself, Pederson said she would “love it” and her “whole body will feel tingly”, the court heard.

The IT professional then provided explicit instructions on how to self-pleasure, with Judge Peter Berman SC stating it appeared he was working at the same time as he wrote “just on a work call now sorry”.

On another occasion, in April 2020, Pederson went to a “teen chat room” and spoke to another police officer pretending to be a 14-year-old girl.

The court heard the 61-year-old man said “I like chatting sexy sometimes, you ever do that?”, said she was “superhot” and said “I just have to be careful wife doesn’t catch me chatting”.

The court heard the US-born man, who at one stage worked as a drummer, had a number of stressors in his life at the time of the grooming, some exacerbated by Covid.

Pederson told a psychologist he had no sexual interest in children and first used the online sexual chat websites five years earlier as a means of sexual expression and sexual validation, the court heard.

Judge Berman accepted Pederson was remorseful and noted how he did pose as a teenage boy, or make any attempts to restart the conversation with the ‘girls’.

Pederson pleaded guilty to the charge at the earliest opportunity and was sentenced to two years jail, but is to be released immediately on entering a recognisance of $5000 with conditions including he is of good behaviour for four years and continues his psychological treatment.