Gold Coast crime: Worst child sex offenders and their vile crimes
Gold Coast courts have dealt with countless cases involving the exploitation of children in recent years. Here are seven child sex offenders exposed.
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GOLD Coast courts have dealt with countless cases involving the exploitation of children in recent years.
Offenders cannot always be named but their identities aren’t always kept a secret by the legal system.
Here are seven Gold Coast child sex offenders exposed.
Robert Bruce Montgomery
A former celebrity psychologist best known for appearing on the TV show Big Brother as a consultant was jailed for multiple historic child sexual abuse charges.
Gold Coast man Robert Bruce Montgomery was imprisoned last year for 12 months over the abuse of children in the 1960s.
The 76-year-old was sentenced to four years jail with a non-parole period of 12 months by District Court Judge Paul Conlon.
His sentence included a 10 per cent discount for his early guilty plea.
In February last year, Montgomery pleaded guilty to eight charges including five counts of indecent assault and two counts of buggery.
During his sentence hearing last year, several of his victims said they were abused by Montgomery as 12-year-olds in the Sydney suburbs of Edgecliff and Marrickville.
He committed offences against three boys while he was a Scoutmaster.
The police charges against Montgomery and his extradition from Queensland to NSW brought his successful career to a screeching halt.
Robert John Fardon
After leaving home at age 14 following a violent confrontation with his father, Robert John Fardon fell in with bikies on the Gold Coast and became an enforcer.
He would later run drugs and guns around Australia.
Considered one of Queensland’s worst sex offenders, Fardon was sentenced to 14 years in jail in the 1980s for the violent rape of a woman.
Just a month after being released from jail, he committed another rape.
Among his shocking crimes was the rape of 12-year-old girl in 1978.
After spending decades in jail, he was released into supervised accommodation in 2013.
Jason Mizner
Jason Mizner, 47, was sentenced in Brisbane District Court in 2018 to a total of 19 years in jail for sexually abusing a two-year-old girl, who was still in nappies, and filming the assaults.
The former Gold Coast yoga teacher committed the offences over several months in the 2000s.
The judge in Mizner’s trial was so disturbed by a video of him raping a child she walked out of the courtroom and had to adjourn the matter.
In handing down the sentence, District Court Judge Leanne Clare described Mizner’s offences as “a different kind of evil”.
He previously pleaded guilty to more than 65 child sex offences including more than 30 counts of rape of a two-year-old girl and videotaping the assaults.
Mizner will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years.
Bruce Fraser-Grant
This 64-year-old Gold Coast diesel fitter was sentenced to 10 months in jail after molesting a young girl over a five-year period.
Pimpama man Bruce Fraser-Grant pleaded guilty to eight counts of indecent treatment of a child under the age of 12 in Beenleigh District Court last year.
The court heard the abuse started when the girl was just six years old, and continued until she was 11. Fraser-Grant was charged in late 2019.
The most serious offending, in the opinion of Judge Michael Byrne QC, was when Fraser-Grant removed his pants and underwear and started rubbing his uncovered penis against the girl’s vagina through her clothes, telling her to “stay where she was” or else he would tell everyone about what was going on.
Crown prosecutor Stephen Muir submitted Fraser-Grant’s actions were made worse by his use of “emotional blackmail” on the victim.
Defence counsel Debra Wardle noted her client’s strong work history and lack of prior offending.
The court heard Fraser-Grant had engaged in counselling to try and get to the bottom of his offending, but this was unsuccessful.
Judge Byrne described Fraser-Grant’s actions as “disgraceful and disgusting and somewhat puzzling” in light of the defendant’s otherwise good character.
Fraser-Grant was sentenced to serve 10 months behind bars, at which point he will be released on a three-year probation order.
Convictions were automatically recorded.
Hugh “Ossie” McNamara
RUGBY league great Peter Jackson’s death of a heroin overdose in Sydney in 1997 shocked the football world.
He was a larrikin, had won everything in the game, was widely respected and marvelled for his playing ability. He was only 33 years old.
As a 16-year-old boarder at The Southport School he was befriended by rugby union coach and house master Hugh “Ossie” McNamara, who was later convicted of abuse at other schools.
McNamara would be convicted as a child molester at his next school, Brisbane’s Marist Brothers Ashgrove, following his abuse of a 15-year-old boarder.
The paedophile died in 2012.
Mark Francis Stafford
A FORMER Surfers Paradise Surf Lifesaving clubbie was given a head sentence of three years in jail after pleading guilty to sexually abusing seven girls aged from eight years old.
Mark Francis Stafford pleaded guilty to a total of 31 charges in Brisbane District Court in June 2015.
He was sentenced to three years in jail, suspended after 10 months, for the offences committed from 2008 until 2013.
Court documents showed that the charges against Stafford related to his involvement with girls from three Gold Coast families.
The court heard that many of the incidents happened at his house on a weekend after he convinced parents to let several girls sleep over.
During the visit Stafford instructed the girls to paint his body while naked, pretended to have sex with a mannequin in front of them and swam with them in the pool while he was naked.
He also served the children Midori and encouraged them to search for explicit pictures and videos on his computer.
Stafford gave the girls key search words that brought up a pornographic video and while they were watching a couple having sex, he explained what masturbating was and how to do it.
He took pictures of the girls jumping into the pool on the same day, photographing them the moment their T-shirts pushed up so that their bodies were almost naked.
Police found the images in a search of his home.
Stafford also admitted to abusing another one of the other girls in her home, while her parents were in another room nearby.
Other charges related to him touching the girls sexually while showering with them.
His oldest victim, who was a teenager at the time, sent a message to Stafford before he was charged saying she was planning to expose him.
Stafford sent back a text saying he thought the girls “were enjoying it”.
He threatened to kill himself if she took action. Police used the texts as evidence against him.
The Surfers Paradise Surf Life Saving Club revoked membership immediately after police told the club he was under investigation as part of Surf Life Saving Australia’s policy.
Anthony Nelson
A GOLD Coast junior soccer coach jailed for sexually molesting two teenage girls was allowed to continue working with his under-12 team, despite his club knowing about the charges.
Burleigh Heads Soccer Club gave the paedophile, 38-year-old Anthony Nelson, a reference to use in court to help have his sentence reduced.
Nelson was coaching the under-12s weeks after pleading guilty in June 2016 to having forced himself on to two girls, aged 14 and 15, he met through the club.
The club excused its actions at the time, saying it knew of the charges but it had not been thought Nelson was a risk with an all-boys team.
Nelson had not been required to hold a blue card as he had a child in the team he was coaching.
Nelson faced Southport District Court in July 2016 on two charges of indecent treatment and was sentenced to six months in jail.
The Southport District Court was told Nelson gave the girls cigarettes and alcohol during a slumber party in Varsity Lakes in May 2015.
In the early hours of the morning, Nelson crept into the bedroom where the first victim, a 14-year-old girl, was sleeping and lay next to her, stroking her face.
He then asked the girl to kiss him before groping her breasts and pinning her hands down before leaving the room.
Nelson then returned later and lay down next to the 15-year-old girl and stroked her back and bottom, before getting on top of her and trying to kiss her, saying she was “sexy” and a “princess”.
The court heard he would not get off her, despite the girl hitting him.
He eventually left after she told him she was “still a child”.
In both instances he “dared” the terrified girls to scream for help in what Judge William Everson described at the time as “brazen” and “persistent” attacks.
Judge Everson said Nelson’s criminal history in both NSW and Queensland meant he must serve time in custody.
Nelson was found guilty of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend and assaulting her elderly father in Sydney in 1998. In June 2013, he was fined $750 for assault although no conviction was recorded.
The court was told the two girls suffered severe mental anguish after the incident.
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