Alec West jailed over producing ‘appalling’ child abuse video game potentially downloaded by millions

A Geelong father made at least $900,000 from an “abhorrent” video game that was likely accessed by millions, a court has heard.

Alec Stephen West. Picture: supplied

A Geelong dad who created a video game that simulated child abuse, and was potentially downloaded millions of times, has been jailed.

Alec Stephen West, 32, appeared in the County Court on Tuesday via prison link from Hopkins Correctional Centre and was jailed by Judge Gerard Mullaly for eleven years and seven months, with a non-parole period of eight years and four months.

In December, West pleaded guilty to a raft of charges, including controlling, producing, accessing, transmitting, making available and possessing child abuse material.

The Highton father-of-two also pleaded guilty to dealing with the proceeds of crime and three summary charges related to filming three young women without their knowledge.

For almost ninety-minutes on Tuesday afternoon, Judge Mullaly outlined West’s sophisticated and deliberate conduct, which began in 2020 when he created a video game that allowed the player to take control of a sexual predator and encouraged incestuous sexual abuse and exploitation of young female family members.

Judge Mullaly spent almost an hour describing the facts, circumstances and gravity of West’s offending, much of it relating to his role as the “creator, controller, distributor, and profit-maker” of the “dreadful” game.

West created the game, wrote scripts, developed storylines and had created 20 updates, with the assistance of a man in Canada.

Judge Mullaly said although 3D-rendered, some characters in the game were “plainly pre-pubescent” and said while it did not depict real children, it fuelled demand for child abuse material involving real children.

He described West as a “child abuse entrepreneur” who made more than $900,000 from the game in almost three years through subscriptions.

The “scope and spread of the game was enormous” the court heard and it could have been downloaded millions of times.

“Your creation does much to normalise abhorrent sexual behaviours,” Judge Mullaly said.

“Your sexualising of children and the promotion of incest as a normal way of interacting within families reveals a dark aspect of your character.”

Alec Stephen West

Judge Mullaly found West’s moral culpability was “extremely high indeed” and not mitigated by any of the material put on his behalf.

Alongside creating the game, West accessed and downloaded child abuse material containing real-life children taken from websites “at the serious and approaching the extreme end of the spectrum” the court heard.

Judge Mullaly refrained from detailing the “more grotesque” aspects of the material, other than it included “bewildering acts of rape and penetration” of children of primary school age or under the age of five.

Judge Mullaly also referred to victim impact statements provided by the women West covertly filmed, with one victim described feeling humiliated, exposed and disgusted and another stating she turned to self-harm.

Judge Mullaly said West’s family support, solid work history and lack of prior history could ostensibly establish good foundations for rehabilitations.

However, it was West’s psychological presentation that was problematic and troubling.

A psychologist’s report, tendered at his plea, described West as having poor insight, limited awareness, entrenched deviance and an “extensive and obsessional involvement in pornography”.

He also had a concerning “lack of interpersonal empathy” and showed traits of narcissistic and anti-social personality disorders, the court heard.

The psychologist concluded, using two metrics, that West was a medium to high risk of reoffending, a finding Judge Mullaly agreed with and adopted.

West had 113 days already spent in custody reckoned as time served and must register as a sex offender for life.

Without a guilty plea, Judge Mullaly said he would have jailed West for a maximum of 14 years.

Originally published as Alec West jailed over producing ‘appalling’ child abuse video game potentially downloaded by millions