Second Alice Springs man sentenced over conversations with fake child Facebook account

A man who procured sexually explicit material from who he thought was a 12-year-old girl has become the second person to be sentenced after being fooled by a fake Facebook account.

AN Alice Springs man who procured sexually explicit material from who he thought was a 12-year-old girl has become the second person to be sentenced after being fooled by a fake Facebook account.

Unbeknown to then 29-year-old Luke Curtis, the young girl he started sexting over Facebook, known to him as “Kelz”, was in fact a grown man.

When NT Police executed a search warrant in December 2020 on the impostor’s house and discovered communications between Curtis and Kelz, the 29-year-old’s world came crashing down.

Curtis, now 30, appeared at the NT Supreme Court earlier this month for sentencing after pleading guilty to three child sexual offences, including trying to arrange to meet up for sex with a child under 16.

At the hearing, Justice Judith Kelly made a recognisance release order, effectively waiving any further jail time for Curtis, who had spent the past 13 months on remand. Curtis was required to pay a $500 good behaviour bond, which will be in effect for the next two years.

Justice Kelly added she would have considered ordering that Curtis spend even less time behind bars had she sentenced him sooner.

Luke Curtis was sentenced for child sexual offences at the NT Supreme Court in Alice Springs. Picture: Facebook.

The court heard Curtis’ father, a former veteran NT Police officer, had been left greatly disappointed but remained supportive of the 30-year-old.

In sentencing, Justice Kelly reminded Curtis of the devastating impact of his offending.

“Those images you received involved the abuse of a real child,” she said.

“A real child was hurt in the making of those videos. So real children are not just traumatised by the making of those videos, the initial abuse, but they are re-traumatised over the years, knowing that images of their abuse are out there and being seen by adult men like you.”

Days before Curtis faced the courts, Justice Kelly was handing down a heftier sentence to a 28-year-old man named Roderick Mentha, who had arranged to meet up for sex with Kelz at Anzac Oval last February.

But by this time, the impostor had been charged and the account placed in the hands of covert Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers.

The covert officers had continued speaking to Mentha, and when the 28-year-old offered to pay the supposed child for sex, the AFP hatched an elaborate sting operation to bring down the child sexual offender.

Around 4pm on Friday, February 5, Mentha drove his blue Holden Commodore into the oval’s parking lot, where the person he believed to be Kelz was waiting for him. In reality, it was an undercover female police officer. As Mentha began walking from his car, undercover officers swooped in, arresting the 28-year-old.