‘Egregious breach of trust’: Top End man groomed, sexually abused pre-teen girls

A Top End dad who told two 11-year-old girls ‘pop rocks are for blow jobs’ before having sex with one of them while his wife was at church is now behind bars. See his sentence.

A Top End man has been sentenced to six years behind bars for grooming and sexually indecent acts with two pre-teen girls. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

A married father-of-three who plied pre-teen girls with Vodka Cruisers and told them “pop rocks are for blow jobs” before sexually abusing one of them while his wife was at church has been jailed for six years.

The 31-year-old, who cannot be named, pleaded guilty to grooming the 11-year-olds and having sex with one of them while they were living together at a Top End home.

The Supreme Court heard the man would often take the girls out for drives late at night while his wife and children were sleeping, at times talking to them about sex – something Justice John Burns described as a “process of normalising sexual issues with them”.

The victims would sometimes shower naked together and on occasions the man pushed the door open to stare at them, once making a joke about setting up a camera in the shower.

After one of the girls moved interstate, the court heard the man continued to spend “significant time” with the other victim, “including regularly sleeping in the same bedroom and bed or in the lounge room with her”.

There were two instances where the man sexually assaulted one of the girls at the Palmerston Rydges Hotel.

There were two instances where the man took the girl to stay at the Rydges Hotel in Palmerston and she woke to him touching her vagina.

“You told her that she talks to a lot of boys and that sex stuff was going to happen eventually and that she will end up doing stuff with a boy, so she should do it with you,” Justice Burns said.

“You told the victim you were her friend and that she could talk to you about anything and she should not be scared of you, as you are the only person who really cares about her.”

At one point, the man entered a room where the girl, then 13, was lying on a bed, knelt between her legs and rubbed his erect penis on her vagina.

“The victim said nothing but was scared, after a period of time, she pushed at you and told you to stop,” Justice Burns said.

“You asked the victim if she was okay and told her that she should not feel scared … you said that if you had wanted to hurt her you would not have stopped when she asked you to.”

Justice Burns said the man’s difficult childhood went some way to reduce his moral culpability but “you knew that what you were doing was wrong”.

“Each offence was premeditated and involved a degree of planning … and each of the offences involved an egregious breach of trust,” he said.

Victim impact statements from the girls described the “ongoing devastating effects” of the offending.

The man pleaded guilty to procuring a child to perform an indecent act, two counts of performing an act of gross indecency upon a child without consent, and sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 16.