Tasmanian influencer jailed for raping her son, sending video

A Tasmanian mum who boasts tens of thousands of followers online and bragged of her parenting skills has been jailed for raping and molesting one son, and molesting another. WARNING.

A Tasmanian influencer who boasts tens of thousands of followers online and bragged of her hands-off, environmentally responsible parenting style has been jailed for raping and molesting her son and sending videos of the abuse to a predator for cash.

The northern Tasmanian stay-at-home mum aged in her thirties, who cannot be named by order of the court, was sentenced in Launceston Supreme Court on Thursday.

She had previously pleaded guilty to a raft of vile offences: six counts of indecent assault, four counts of producing child exploitation material, three counts of distribution of child exploitation material, one count of rape, and one count of possessing child exploitation material.

The offences were committed mostly against one of her sons, commencing when he was aged about five months old, although a second child was also molested at three months of age.

The woman – who previously sold fetish images online while she was pregnant, not that there was anything “unlawful” about that, Justice Robert Pearce noted – abused her three-month-old by molesting him, after she received a request for the content online.

She received between $500–$1000 for this video.

Following this, the woman sourced 10 videos of the most heinous child abuse imaginable online – depicting children she did not know – and on-sold them online over a period of about three years, receiving between $500–$1000 per transaction.

Her offending culminated in persistent abuse of her five-month-old son, whom she repeatedly abused, including by performing oral sex on him, thereby raping him.

She received $600 for this video.

The woman’s conduct was detected by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, which referred the information on to the AFP, who subsequently sent in on to Tasmania Police.

Her phone was seized in December last year and she was subsequently charged.

Justice Pearce told the court the woman’s offending was motivated by financial gain.

“As your family grew, financial pressures arose,” he said.

“You later told the police that your family could have survived without the extra money.

“However, you felt pressure to maintain an idealistic image of what a family should be and wanted your children to have the best of everything.

“In a way which could hardly be more contradictory to your criminal acts, you were trying to create a social media following by promoting (your hands-off, environmentally responsible) parenting style, and holding yourself out as a model parent.”

Online, the woman boasted of her parenting abilities, asserted that “family is everything” to her, and called her children her “little loves”.

Justice Pearce sentenced the woman to four years’ imprisonment, backdated to August 12, when she was remanded in custody.

She will be parole eligible after serving half of her sentence.

Justice Pearce said he considered her risk of reoffending, “certainly against your own children”, to be low.