Grant Harden: Prolific child sex abuse revealed

After pleading guilty to a raft of horrific child sex abuse charges, a Sydney soccer coach has asked not to be named in media reports

A Sydney soccer coach has applied to the court for his name to be banned from media reports.

Grant Harden’s lawyer Sarah Hedberg made the non-publication order application on Thursday after her client pleaded guilty to 175 charges of sickening child sex abuse.

This included 16 counts of having sex with a child under the age of 10 and sharing videos of the abuse with fellow paedophiles online.

The 31-year-old’s charges have been written about previously.

But now that the St Clair man has pleaded guilty the details of his crimes will be made available for the media to publish, which prompted the application.

St Clair man Grant Harden has appeared in court via video link.

Ms Hedberg said the facts could identify victims and to avoid this, her client’s name and certain details should be banned from publicising, “out of concern” for the boys he abused.

“(The application) is brought by Mr Harden out of concern for the complainants,” she told the court.

Federal Prosecutor Claire Moore told the court the order was not necessary as there was a law already in place requiring media to not publish any information which could reveal the identity of sex assault victims.

Ms Moore said federal police wanted Harden’s name to be published to “further their investigation”.

She told the court Harden’s name, face and address published in previous articles had not resulted in the victims being identified.

Junior soccer coach Grant Harden when he was arrested in 2020.

“(Therefore) his name and address is not likely to do so in future,” she told the court.

She added the case was a matter of “significant public interest”.

Magistrate Robert Williams adjourned his decision on whether to grant the non publication order application to July 15.

The case was adjourned to July 30 for a committal mention in the NSW District Court.

Harden‘s 2020 arrest was part of Operation Arkstone - a huge Australian Federal Police operation busting a global network of alleged child sex offenders.

Australian authorities were tipped off from US counterparts about someone distributing and receiving child abuse material online.

So far 20 men across Australia have been charged, with 14 of these alleged offenders from NSW.

This resulted in 53 children being removed from further harm in Australia.