Simon Luebbers admits to series of depraved sex offending

A former police prosecutor who once supported victims of sex crimes has been jailed for a string of heinous abuse.

Former police prosecutor Simon Luebbers will be jailed on Thursday after admitting to series of depraved sex offending

Former police prosecutor Simon Luebbers was jailed on Thursday after admitting to a series of depraved sex offending.

Magistrate Luisa Bazzani noted the “sad irony” in jailing a pervert former police prosecutor who supported victims of sexual crimes during his decades-long career.

Luebbers, 44, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to covertly recording a woman and a teenage girl on hidden cameras installed in a bathroom and bedroom over several years.

The offending spanned more than 15 years, and began shortly after he was appointed as a police officer.

During her sentencing remarks, Magistrate Luisa Bazzani described Luebbers’ crimes as “breathtakingly deceitful” and which served no purpose other than to satisfy his own perverse sexual gratification.

“It’s a sad irony while you purported to be fulfilling your obligations to uphold the law and protect the community, you were committing vile criminal acts,” she said.

The magistrate also questioned submissions by Luebbers’ lawyer who said the ex-cop felt deep regret, shame and disgust about his behaviour.

“If that’s how your client feels about what he has done, why didn’t he feel that when he was offending?” she said.

The disgraced former prosecutor was motionless and stared straight ahead as the magistrate denounced his crimes.

On Wednesday, Luebbers sat in court as his victims each addressed him, describing the devastation his crimes have had on them.

His first victim, who he filmed in two houses in the mid-2000s, said: “I felt like my world imploded”.

Simon Luebbers plead guilty to charges including stalking, placing hidden cameras, producing child abuse material and distributing intimate images.

Luebbers sent nude images of to men in return for them sending videos of them pleasuring themselves to him.

“I need to live with the fact that if they’re out there on the internet, they’re out there forever,” the woman said.

“I don’t know the full extent (of the betrayal) and I never will.

“The overwhelming feeling of betrayal just won’t stop.”

Luebbers’s other victim, a teenage girl, told the court she felt “violated and disgusting” when investigators first told her Luebbers had secretly filmed her and kept images for his own gratification.

“I felt physically ill with myself,” she said.

She said she can’t get through the day without having flashbacks about what happened to her.

“I don’t feel the same joy I used to.”

The girl’s mother said she had “lived, and lived, and relived this trauma for months and months and months”.

She said she struggled to forgive herself for trusting Luebbers around her daughter.

“If you could die of guilt and shame I would be dead,” she said.

Prosecutor Anne-Marie Stephanides said the only appropriate sentence for Luebbers was time behind bars.

He will likely serve his sentence in a wing of the Fulham Correctional Centre reserved for high risk prisoners including former police officers.

“The fact that he may or may not have had an infatuation with (his first victim) does not mitigate against this highly immoral offending,” she said.

Luebbers has never explained his offending, and gave a “no comment” interview after he tried to escape from the police officers who arrested him.

Ms Stephanides said Luebbers’ offending was a “gross breach of trust” against both his victims.

“He knew how wrong this was; he was a prosecutor in sex offences, he was a lawyer,” she said.

She said it was clear both victims had “significant trauma inflicted on them” by Luebbers.

Luebbers’s barrister, Tom Acutt, conceded his client would be going to jail when he is sentenced on Thursday.

Luebbers, now unemployed and living with his elderly mother, was kicked out of his basketball team when his offending was revealed by news outlets last week.

“This offending is harrowing and serious, we don’t shy away from that,” he said.

He will be a registered sex offender for 15 years.