Eagle Vale doctor Thrasivoulos Triantopoulos spared jail time on child abuse material charge

The Sydney GP confessed to downloading more than a thousands videos and images depicting the sexual abuse of children as young as three “because I am a sick person”.

Eagle Vale GP Thrasivoulos Triantopoulos has escaped jail time after pleaded guilty to a single charge of accessing child abuse material.

A south-west Sydney doctor who confessed to watching sickening child porn on the internet during all-night binge-watching sessions has been spared jail time on sentence.

Dr Thrasivoulos Triantopoulos spent almost three months in custody following his arrest in September last year, before the NSW Supreme Court granted him strict bail, which included a condition banning the former Eagle Vale Medical Centre GP from working in the medical profession.

He subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge of using a carriage service to access child abuse material, which carries a maximum jail sentence of 15 years.

However, Triantopoulos recently walked out of Penrith District Court on a 14-month suspended prison sentence after Judge Gallagher confirmed she would not be sending him back to jail for his crimes.

Documents tendered to the court said detectives discovered 1602 images and videos of child abuse material stored on his computer during a raid at his Rouse Hill home.

TOO GRAPHIC TO PRINT

The court heard Triantopoulos was cooperative with police and made immediate admissions, claiming ownership of the material on the computer and saying he’d been downloading “everything that was out there …. for a long time”.

According to police, the videos depicted children as young as three years old being sexually abused or posing in various states of undress.

Further details of what the images contained are too graphic to print.

Triantopoulos told detectives he found the gross material through internet searches and accessed it at least weekly over a period of months, sometimes for up to seven hours a night in binge-watching sessions while his family was asleep.

Eagle Vale Medical Centre. Picture: Google

He told police at times he would spend the entire night watching the material, then go straight to work the next day without sleep.

When asked why he viewed the material, Triantopoulos said “because I’m a sick person”.

The court heard Triantopoulos had no prior criminal record, however Judge Gallagher said it was not unusual for such crimes to be committed by people of prior good character.

“His motivation was sexual — he knew it was wrong but continued to access and view it,” she said.

The court heard Triantopoulos was drinking to excess at the time of the offending and had been suffering from complex grief disorder following the death of his 18-year-old son from a degenerative genetic disorder in 2021.

Judge Gallagher said Triantopoulos had penned a letter of apology to the court in which he expressed his guilt and remorse for what he’d done, saying he sometimes “didn’t like or know the person he is”.

Friends who gave character references to the court on Triantopoulos’ behalf said they were shocked when told of his crimes and described his conduct as “out of character” for the “dedicated family man” they knew.

The court heard Triantopoulos had not sought re-registration as a GP since his arrest and recognised the need to obtain professional treatment for his own mental health.

In sparing Triantopoulos jail, Judge Gallagher found he presented a low risk of reoffending.

“I find he has very good prospects of rehabilitation given his prior good character, the time spent in custody and his loss of employment, which has had a salutary effect on him,” she said.