Richard Radley: Southport man jailed for accessing child abuse, trying to defile adolescents

A Gold Coast man who previously masturbated in front of kids and molested a young girl is back to his foul ways, accessing child-abuse material and trying to solicit adolescents online. Warning: Distressing content.

Southport pedophile Richard Radley, 50. Picture: Facebook

A Gold Coast man who previously masturbated in front of kids and molested a young girl is back to his foul ways, accessing child-abuse material and trying to solicit adolescents online.

Southport man Richard Radley, 50, who lives with cerebral palsy and an intellectual impairment, appeared in Southport District Court on Thursday, where he admitted to four charges.

He pleaded guilty to two Commonwealth offences, accessing and possessing child exploitation material using a carriage service, and two Queensland offences, using the internet to procure children under the age of 16 and intentionally going to meet them.

His Commonwealth offending was committed between October 2021 and his arrest following a search warrant on August 24, 2022.

Analysis of his iPad revealed he had accessed child-exploitation material on at least six occasions, downloading 43 files, which depicted children aged from three to 12.

Southport pedophile Richard Radley, 50. Picture: Facebook

Six files had been saved to his device.

Disturbingly, his password to the platform he used to access the files, Mega, was ‘six year old pu--y’, while his username was ‘love little pu--y’, the court heard.

Radley claimed to officers the login details were a “joke”.

He was granted bail, but in March last year, his offending took a turn for the worse, when he used Google Chat to message a woman he thought was the mother of a 12-year-old girl and eight-year-old boy, but was actually law enforcement.

The court heard Radley made a series of disgusting comments as he positioned himself to meet the fictitious kids.

Referring to the girl, he asserted, “Once she gets older she becomes less of a toy for a pedo, 13 is usually the cut off,” and expressed his preference for 12-year-olds because they were “cute”.

He proposed the four of them get dinner before he retired to bed for a “play” with the kids, while the mother watched and pleasured herself, and also said he would be a “gentle teacher” to the children.

On March 8, 2024, Radley arrived at the prearranged meeting spot, a coffee shop in Brisbane, and was arrested.

In his possession was a fresh packet of condoms and a small library of books for the kids, with titles like, What’s Happening to My Body?.

Radley has been remanded in pre-sentence custody since his arrest, a period of 349 days.

The court heard he had been before the court twice before for child sexual offending: in 1996, he was placed on 12 months’ probation, with no convictions recorded, for masturbating in front of two young boys aged between five and nine and asking them if they wanted to “touch it”.

And in June 2002, when he was aged about 27, he was sentenced again after admitting to rubbing the vagina of a four-year-old girl and asking her, “Do you like it?”.

The court was told Radley had lived a difficult life due to his profound disabilities, and was allegedly being harassed behind bars due to his impairment.

Radley was sentenced to two parallel orders: 18 months’ imprisonment, suspended for an operational period of three years after serving four months, and four years’ imprisonment, with parole eligibility after serving 14 months.

Taking into account time served and the staggered commencement dates of the two orders, Radley will be eligible for parole in September.

Originally published as Richard Radley: Southport man jailed for accessing child abuse, trying to defile adolescents