A former member of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has been sentenced to seven years’ jail for online child abuse offences against 10 girls in Australia and two other countries.<\/p>\n
Warning: This story contains details of child sexual abuse that may distress some readers.<\/p>\n
The man, known as BH for legal reasons, was arrested on March 25, 2024 at a caravan park on the New South Wales Mid North Coast.<\/p>\n
The arrest followed a NSW Police investigation that stemmed from a tip-off from the New Jersey State Police in the United States.<\/p>\n
On January 29, 2024 New Jersey State Police detectives conducted an operation in which an officer posed as a 13-year-old girl online and exchanged text messages with BH on KIK Messenger.<\/p>\n
BH told the undercover officer that he was based in Australia.<\/p>\n
NSW Police then executed a warrant at the caravan park.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police arrested the man at a caravan park on the Mid North Coast. (Supplied: NSW Police)<\/p>\n
In May BH pleaded guilty to 18 offences, including procuring a child for sexual activity outside Australia, multiple counts of using a carriage service to solicit child abuse material and multiple counts of possessing child abuse material between March 2023 and February 2024.<\/p>\n
During sentencing in the NSW District Court at Sydney’s Downing Centre on Friday Judge Craig Everson SC told the court that BH was a serving member of the RAAF at the time of his arrest.<\/p>\n
The court heard BH assisted police with their inquiries and that further investigations revealed he had committed acts against 10 girls.<\/p>\n
The court heard BH made admissions and denials to police about the use of KIK Messenger to receive or view child sex abuse material.<\/p>\n
“Denies screenshotting or sending \u2014 those were both lies,” the court heard.<\/p>\n
International offending<\/p>\n
Agreed facts tendered in court stated that multiple devices contained more than 800 videos and images of prepubescent girls or boys either exposing themselves and\/or engaging in sexual acts with adults.<\/p>\n
Judge Everson detailed BH’s offending against 10 victims \u2014 one in Australia, three in the United Kingdom and the remainder from the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He told the court BH had offered a 12-year-old girl from America $500 to send nude photos of herself via Snapchat.<\/p>\n
She was not paid and BH threatened to leak the photos to her family and friends if she did not send more.<\/p>\n
The court was told BH asked a 12-year-old NSW girl via an app whether she could meet him and have sex while she was wearing her school uniform.<\/p>\n
BH told the ABC through a statement issued by his lawyer, James Janke, that he was extremely remorseful for his actions.<\/p>\n
“I’m sorry to those that I have harmed and their families,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
“I am grateful to the court for its thorough consideration of the matter and would now like to get on with paying my debt to society.”<\/p>\n
Mr Janke said BH would not appeal his sentence.<\/p>\n
Judge Everson sentenced BH to serve at least five years behind bars, backdated to March 25, 2024.<\/p>\n
He will be eligible for parole in 2029.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former member of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has been sentenced to seven years’ jail for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,111358,111357,111360,44,44035,4277,111359],"class_list":["post-170552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-downing-centre","tag-international-paedophile-jailed","tag-new-jersey-state-police","tag-news","tag-nsw-district-court","tag-nsw-police","tag-raaf-member-jailed-child-abuse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}