Graeme Martin fronts court over grooming a young person for sex
A Sunshine grub exchanged more than 6500 pages of messages in just 10 months when grooming a teenage girl he described as his ‘hot little 14-year-old daughter’.
Melbourne City
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A sex grub who flooded a teenage girl he met on an adult fetish dating site with messages during a 10-month grooming spree has been jailed.
Graeme Martin, of Sunshine, was on Friday sentenced to 26 months in jail in the County Court but will be released after serving one year to be of good behaviour for three years.
Martin, now 70, engaged in sexualized communication with the teen, who he believed was 14, between September 2020 and August 2021 and called her his “hot little 14-year-old daughter”.
He was outed after she contacted Martin’s sons on Facebook and reported her relationship to them and they in turn went to police.
The teen, who initially told Martin she was 18, then 17 and finally, that she would turn 15 in December 2020. She was 18 and began following Martin’s profile on the adult fetish dating site Kint and communicating with him on Whatsapp and other channels.
The two exchanged thousands of messages, many of which were sent after she told him she was 14. In one of the messages, Martin enquired about her age by saying ‘I am still your daddy but you do realise your mum could go to the police about this.
“I am really torn, I do want to f--- you at least when you’re 14. Once you are 15-and-a-half, it would be much safer to meet up and do non-sexual things,” Martin wrote.
Judge Patricia Riddell said it was clear from the messages that in September 2020 Martin was well aware of the illegality of sexual communications with a child of that age.
Martin sent her numerous messages that demonstrated his willingness to engage in phone or facetime sex with her, including a message that read “You’re starting to need more than just phone sex, aren’t you”.
He also sent multiple messages that indicated he was willing to engage in sexual activity in person with her, including taking her virginity and impregnating her.
Martin also sent her sexually explicit material including of bestiality and pictures of restraints on her bed, collars, leash and gag to secure and flog her with.
He told her he was not interested in children and that teenagers were about the youngest that turned him on. The teen attempted suicide once during their contact, the court heard.
Martin told police that if she had said she was 14 from the start, he would have “cut and run so bloody fast”.
Judge Riddell said teenagers were vulnerable when it came to online communication and that sexualised conversation with them has the potential to interrupt with their natural sexual development, lead to confusion, self-doubt and mistrust.
Such conversations with a teenager also tended to occur at a time in young people’s lives when they were most likely to push the boundaries of parents, she said.
Judge Riddell said an adult encouraging them to lie or deceive their parents or acting secret could lead to disruption and mistrust within families.
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