Ex-paratrooper paedo Stephen Ealam jailed for sex with schoolgirl at Frankston footy club shed
A woman who was sexually abused by a 32-year-old creep when she was just 14 years old has told a court her attacker took away her “voice, innocence and freedom”. And the ex-paratrooper has learned his fate over the sickening assault.
South East
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A former paratrooper who had sex with a 14-year-old schoolgirl at a southeast football ground then told his victim not to worry about getting pregnant has been jailed.
Stephen Ealam, 40, was sentenced in the County Court on Friday to a minimum of nine years behind bars following a string of sickening incidents.
In one incident 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.
The victim, now aged 22, told the court she had been left battling sleeplessness and depression as well as having her “voice, innocence and freedom” taken away.
“You knew very well she was upset and in a most vulnerable state … frightening her into saying nothing by telling her there would be hard repercussions for you and that she would be taken away,” Judge Gabriele Cannon said.
“(You) paint(ed) yourself as some helpless victim who she controlled and directed.”
Ealam — who had spent 385 days in custody — pleaded guilty to a stack of charges including sexual penetration of a child under 16.
He was jailed for a maximum of 15 years and six months and was made a registered sex offender for life.
brittany.goldsmith@news.com.au
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