Young girl raped in sex offender’s home after being returned to scene of earlier abuse

A YOUNG girl placed into care after being sexually abused in the bedroom of a registered child sex offender in a remote Top End community was later returned to live in the area, where the man ordered a teenage boy to rape her in the same room, a court has heard.

A 51-year-old man, whose name is suppressed, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to procuring a 17-year-old boy to rape an 11-year-old girl in October 2019. Picture: Che Chorley

A YOUNG girl placed into care after being sexually abused in the bedroom of a registered child sex offender in a remote Top End community, was later returned to live in the area where the man ordered a teenage boy to rape her in the same room, a court has heard.

A 51-year-old man, whose name is suppressed, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to procuring a 17-year-old youth to rape the girl, then aged 11, in October 2019.

The court heard the man was already required to notify authorities of extended, unsupervised contact with children, when the girl became a frequent visitor to his house in May 2018.

At the same time, a group of teenage boys also visited the man to get cigarettes, and two of them sexually assaulted the girl in his room while he was elsewhere in the house.

The girl was placed into care in Darwin but frequently absconded, and was found in the company of the man, telling police she wanted to return to her home community with him and eventually went back there in April 2019.

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The girl then resumed her visits to his house, going into his room to get cigarettes, as did the group of teenage boys.

One evening in October 2019, the girl came into the man’s room and he “forcefully and aggressively” ordered the 17-year-old to rape her while another teenage boy filmed the assault on his phone.

The video was circulated among an unknown number of community members, one of whom reported it to police, who arrested the man.

Crown prosecutor David Dalrymple told the court the man had been subject to reporting obligations under the Child Protection (Offender Reporting and Registration) Act since 2013, but it had not prevented him from having contact with the children.

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“For an offender who is subject to the (CPORR) regime, who lives in a remote community without a police station, it may well be somewhat of a toothless mechanism for protecting children if there are grey areas or no fulsome information provided in the reports by the offender, and there’s no real follow-up or not sufficient follow-up and monitoring on the ground,” he said.

The man will be sentenced next month.