Ex-army paratrooper Stephen Ealam had sex with 14-year-old schoolgirl at football club shed
A former army engineer and paratrooper from Melbourne’s southeast took a 14-year-old schoolgirl to a Frankston football club shed where he had sex with her before giving his victim a horrid warning.
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A former paratrooper had sex with a 14-year-old schoolgirl at a southeast football ground then told his victim not to worry about getting pregnant.
Stephen Ealam, 40, pleaded guilty in the County Court on Thursday to charges including sexual penetration of a child under 16.
Ealam took his victim to a Frankston football club shed in mid-2012 where he sexually penetrated and committed other lewd acts on her.
The court heard Ealam told his victim “not to worry about getting pregnant” because he’d had a “vasectomy”.
Ealam also told his victim “not to say anything” because he would be jailed and someone would “kill or rape him”.
The depraved fiend also warned his victim that if she said anything then she would also be locked up.
Ealam roamed free until September 2019 when police arrested him at his workplace.
The victim, in her victim statement read to the court, said Ealam “took away my voice, my freedom (and) my innocence”.
The court heard Ealam completed a boilermaker apprenticeship then joined the Australian Army as an engineer before becoming a paratrooper.
Ealam “cleared dead bodies” in Kosovo and Papua New Guinea and suffers with post-traumatic stress disorder, the court heard.
He studied mechanical engineering at Chisholm TAFE and worked on truck bodies for more than a decade before his arrest.
Ealam’s barrister said his client’s PTSD will make prison “very tough”.
It was also submitted Ealam has no prior or subsequent criminal convictions and his “good character” should be taken into account.
Judge Gabriele Cannon remanded Ealam — who appeared via videolink from Hopkins Correctional — for sentencing on October 2.
He will be made a registered sex offender for life.
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