A father who raped his newborn daughter and then forced his baby son to do the same to the little girl has been sentenced to life in prison.
The North Queensland man, whose name cannot be released to protect the identity of the children, pleaded guilty to 87 charges in Townsville District Court this week and showed no emotion as he was sentenced on Tuesday.
Prosecutor Monique Sheppard said he deserved the maximum sentence for his “horrific” crimes.
Among the Townsville man’s victims was his biological daughter, whom he began sexually abusing when she was just one week old.
He also filmed the abuse and spread it online to others, the court heard.
Police searched his property in 2020 after being tipped off by a woman to whom he had been sending disturbing text messages, the Townsville Bulletin reported.
The search revealed children’s underwear and images of videos in which he rapes his daughter.
“The crime committed against her was indeed so serious, so heinous, so deliberate and so horrific that a sentence of the maximum prison term is justified,” Sheppard said.
A Townsville man has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to raping his daughter, filming and distributing the film and a string of other offences (pictured)
The man was accused of rape, indecent acts with a child under 12 years of age of direct descent, bestiality, producing, supplying and possessing child exploitation, burglary and supplying drugs.
The prosecutor told the court that photographs found by police during their search of the house showed the man sexually abused his daughter 11 times until she was 20 months old.
The footage showed the man raping his daughter with his fingers, penis and other objects, the court was told.
One of the videos shows the assault taking place in the changing room of a shopping mall.
The full extent of the man’s crimes is unknown as he would not tell police where he stored the videos.
The girl’s mother told the court in her victim impact statement that her daughter was “restless, crying and [with] redness around her genitals.
She was “crying in pain and saying, ‘Daddy touched me,’ and pointing to her (genitals) while I was changing her diaper,” the mother said.
‘Communication, trust, honor, honesty, loyalty, respect and family were all words that held significant meaning in my life, which was disrupted by a father’s animal lust for his own daughter.’
The woman heard about how she had met the man online and after she became pregnant she sought legal advice. She discovered that he had strange fetishes which made her fear for her daughter’s safety.
The man’s family signed a warrant promising to supervise all visits between him and his daughter.
But after hiring a private investigator, the baby’s mother was able to prove the meetings had not been supervised.
She told the court that since the abuse her young daughter has suffered from nightmares, suicidal thoughts and is unable to… showing affection to other family members.
The man’s baby daughter was sexually abused at least 11 times over a 19-month period, the court heard (photo on stock photo)
The man had a baby son with another woman and the little boy is a week younger than his daughter. He made sure that the boy raping his half-sister, which he then filmed.
In another offence brought to light by the prosecutor, another woman has filed a complaint against the man for soliciting her for a sexual relationship with his son.
The woman had been having a sexual relationship with the man for some time before he asked her to “come and have some fun” with his son, Sheppard said.
Before this relationship, the man had a relationship with a woman to whom he supplied methamphetamine in exchange for sex.
The woman had a 17-month-old daughter and, according to the prosecutor, she would sometimes wake up and see the man in her apartment.
At one point, the man filmed himself sexually abusing the woman while she was unconscious, then turned his attention to the child, who was also asleep, Sheppard said.
Further police investigation at the time yielded the following: Two other young girls were filmed being sexually abused or coerced into sexual acts by the man.
He refused to help identify one of the girls when questioned by authorities and it later emerged that she was the daughters of a woman to whom he had sold marijuana, the court heard.
Ms Sheppard said the man shared images and details of his abuse with others via the messaging app Kik, where he once told someone he wanted to having sex with a child ‘as young as possible, one day old, one week old, as soon as possible’.
In his sentencing ruling, Judge Gregory Lynham said: called the man a “predator” who abused mothers to gain access to their children and shared images of the subsequent abuse with others “who had not requested such material.”
The man also sexually abused the daughter of a woman to whom he supplied meth, forced a woman to have sex with a dog and filmed his baby son while raping his daughter (stock photo)
Defence lawyer Claire Grant told the court her client had no criminal record and had been “completely abandoned” by his family and friends when the charges were made public.
His rejection by society “may not be surprising given the seriousness of his behavior,” Grant said, “but at the end of the day he remains a human being.”
During his youth, the man was a ‘social outcast’ at school and at home, where he often argued with his father.
The court was told that the man had a history of drug addiction and struggled with mental health problems for most of his life.
Mrs Grant claimed that the man could not remember his offence due to these factors and that his early admission of guilt showed remorse.
Mrs Grant had proposed a 20-year prison sentence, but Judge Lynham withdrew this entirely in his verdict on Tuesday.
Judge Lynham rejected the argument that the man showed remorse for not helping police during the investigation, going so far as to say he lied to police.
“It has been suggested that your drug addiction affected your memory, I reject that suggestion. It was clear from other evidence that you were well aware of your behaviour,” Judge Lynham said.
‘Your offense did not arise from your own confessions, but from the images you found. [and it] can only be described as a reprehensible breach of trust.’