Cameron Hort: Boronia man preys on 13-year-old schoolgirl
A perverted Boronia man tried to get a 13-year-old girl to have sex with him, sending her “sordid and degrading” messages and a nude photo. And he made the mistake of continuing the raunchy chat when her mum logged onto her account.
Outer East
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A Boronia man repeatedly tried to convince a 13-year-old to have sex with him, even sending the young girl a photo of his penis.
Cameron Hort, 35, was sentenced to a minimum of 12 months’ jail in the County Court this month, having pleaded guilty to using a carriage service to procure a person under 16 years.
Hort contacted the girl on Facebook and sent her “sordid and degrading” sexual messages over a period of two and a half weeks, repeatedly trying to get her to meet up with him for sex.
He explicitly detailed what sexual acts he wanted do to her, and sent a photo of his erect penis, encouraging her to send nude photos back.
But the court heard the girl instead went on to cease contact with him.
“It was the child’s decency — not yours — which brought this unsavoury, exploitative and obscene exchange to an end,” Judge Felicity Hampel said.
Months later Hort twice tried to contact the girl again.
A year after the explicit messages were sent the girl told her mum about them, and her mum went onto her daughter’s account and pretended to be the young teenager.
Hort initially avoided sexual conversation but then returned to sending sexual messages to the girl’s account.
After he was arrested in April 2018 photos of the girl and other young girls were found in 41 different folders on Hort’s computer.
Judge Hampel said Hort’s conduct was “reprehensible”, with messages revealing the child was clearly “reluctant and resistant”, sexually inexperienced and ignorant to his suggestions.
The court heard Hort had suffered significant tragedy in the years before the crime, having left work to be a full-time carer for his wife before she died of cancer.
Judge Hampel said Hort’s situation deserved great sympathy, but did not satisfactorily explain his offending.
The court heard he was an intelligent man, who’d worked as a boilermaker, courier driver, window cleaner, laboratory assistant, bus and forklift driver, with a supportive family.
It was submitted he had good prospects of rehabilitation, having already engaged with a counsellor, and noted that he had pleaded guilty early.
He was sentenced to two years’ jail, with 12 months to be served before he will be released on a 12-month order reconnaissance requiring him to be of good behaviour and undergo treatment.
Hort will go on the sex offenders register for eight years.
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