Craig Douglas Stewart stung by police posing as 14-year-old girl and her mother in online chat room

Sending explicit messages and pictures to who he thought was a 14-year-old girl and her mother has resulted in a 54-year-old man who was already on the sex-offender register going back to prison.

A man has been caught trying to groom a 14-year-old girl and her mother, when in fact he was communicating with undercover police.

A 54-year-old man thought he was grooming a 14-year-old girl and his mother when he started chatting to the pair in an online chat room and shared sexually explicit messages and pictures with them.

Little did Craig Douglas Stewart know, that the mother and daughter duo were police officers undercover.

Stewart pleaded guilty to one count of using a carriage service to transmit communication to groom another person to make it easier to procure a person under 16 years to engage in sexual activity, one count of using a carriage service to procure persons under 16 years of age and one count of failing to comply with reporting obligations for the online messages and pictures that were sent between March 2 and 21, 2021.

Sentencing submissions took place on March 15, 2023, before Justice Gregory Geason, who is currently awaiting the outcome of a Hobart Magistrates Court hearing that took place last month after he was accused of domestic violence, which he has pleaded not guilty to.

He took leave from his Supreme Court role after the allegations were made public, and Justice Tamara Jago picked up Stewart’s case.

Supreme Court Justice Tamara Jago. Picture: Supplied.

During sentencing, Justice Jago said that the offender had committed serious offences.

“Offending involving online sexual exploitation is becoming increasingly prevalent, and there is a very strong need for the court to act, to the extent it is able, to protect children from the harm and potential corruption that is caused by sexualised communications directed at vulnerable children online.

She said that Stewart had been chatting online with undercover police was “not mitigating”.

“An offender’s conduct is to be regarded as no less morally reprehensible merely because the person to whom the communication was made was, unbeknown to the offender, an undercover police officer.

“It is relevant, of course, that there is no evidence of actual harm occasioned by the defendant’s conduct to a child.”

Stewart was already on the sexual-offender registry at the time he committed the crimes.

He spent 12 months in jail twice for child sexual offences committed in 2008 and 2010.

For his latest crimes, Stewart was sentenced to seven years in prison.

He will not be eligible for parole until he has served four years and six months of his jail term.