Serial child sex pest on ‘lenient’ youth court suspended sentence infects second victim with STD

A SERIAL child sex offender will likely be jailed for the first time after infecting a second teenage victim with a sexually transmitted disease.

A serial child sex offender will likely be jailed for the first time after infecting a second teenage victim with a sexually transmitted disease.

A SERIAL child sex offender will likely be jailed for the first time after infecting a second teenage victim with a sexually transmitted disease.

The 21-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to having sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old girl in September last year.

The court heard the two were living in a remote community when the man started texting the girl one evening, pestering her to come to his house.

The girl initially said she was looking after her young cousin but eventually relented and went to the man’s house where he asked her to have sex with him.

She asked him to use a condom because she “might get pregnant and disease and stuff” but he refused and they had sex before she ended up pushing him off her and going home.

A month later the girl tested positive for chlamydia and identified the man as the person she’d had sex with.

MORE TOP NEWS

Convicted drug dealer and suspected associate of Hells Angels sergeant-at-arms locked up

Residents push to change street named after colonial-era killer

Police refuse to explain lack of visible police presence at Black Lives Matter rally in Darwin

Crown prosecutor Stephen Geary told the court the man had prior offences for having sex with another 14-year-old girl when he was 17, whom he also infected with an STD, and was on a suspended sentence for those crimes at the time of the fresh offending.

“Having known full well that previously he’d had STD’s he didn’t want to wear (a condom),” he said.

“(He showed) a reckless disregard for her health, let alone her age.”

Mr Geary said the fully suspended Youth Justice Court sentence, in which no conviction was imposed, “possibly sent him the message that the courts didn’t take this particular offending very seriously”.

“He’s probably thinking, your honour: ‘Well I’ve been scolded with a feather duster’ – well there’s no feather dusters here,” he said.

“I would urge your honour to impose a sentence that leaves him in no doubt whatsoever that having sexual intercourse — or any sexual activity with children under the age of 16 — is not only unacceptable, it’s illegal.”

Get these amazing earbuds with an NT News subscription deal

The man’s lawyer, Jalal Razi, said his client’s mother and the girl’s mother were related and they had agreed for his family to move away from the community.

Mr Razi said the man’s family wanted him to move to a remote outstation where he couldn’t access social media when he was released from custody.

“There is a considered and thoughtful and fair approach to what’s taken place,” he said.

The man returns to court for sentencing next week.