Former Adelaide Crows employee Justin Kremmer avoids jail after pleading guilty to ‘rather stupid’ child grooming offences

A former Adelaide Crows Football Club employee has been sentenced for grooming two 14-year-olds online.

A former Adelaide Crows employee who had “rather stupid” online conversations with two teenagers for his own sexual gratification has avoided jail.

However, the girl and boy Justin Kremmer thought he was talking to were instead undercover police, and he was arrested after he mailed a football jumper to one of them.

Sentencing him in the South Australian District Court on Tuesday, Judge Paul Cuthbertson said Kremmer was charged over conversations he had in December 2018 and February 2019 using the messaging app Kik.

He said the interactions, during which Kremmer thought he was talking to 14-year-olds, were “prurient and entirely inappropriate”.

“At that time, you were in certain mental distress and you probably obtained some sort of sexual gratification by involving yourself in these rather stupid communications,” the judge said.

“While no harm was done to any child, it can readily be appreciated that parents would not want their children exposed to such communication.”

Justin Kremmer, 31, thought he was communicating with teenagers online. However, the young boy and girl were instead police operatives. Picture: AAP Image/Kelly Barnes

Judge Cuthbertson said Kremmer, now living in Western Australia with his parents, could have been having the conversations for up to 18 months.

“You must have believed they had parents of their own, and you must have believed the parents of these two young persons, if they’d existed, would have been shocked to know their children were communicating with a 30-year-old man in this manner,” the judge said.

Earlier this month, the court heard the operative had posed as a sexually uninformed, shy and inexperienced child.

Prosecutor Kelly Smith said Kremmer demonstrated a “degree of cunning and manipulation” to get the recipient “to sexually engage with him”.

She said the behaviour was “predatory” and the accused was persistent in his attempts to arrange a meeting.

Kremmer, now 31, who had worked in marketing at the Adelaide Crows Football Club prior to his arrest, pleaded guilty to two counts of communicating to make a child amenable to sexual activity.

The judge said he had made significant progress in his rehabilitation and was at low risk of reoffending.

Kremmer had convictions recorded against him and was handed a three-year, $2000 good behaviour bond.

Originally published as Former Adelaide Crows employee Justin Kremmer avoids jail after pleading guilty to ‘rather stupid’ child grooming offences