The 44-year-old was found with numerous category one photos and videos on his laptop and mobile phone when police raided his Fremantle home, the Western Australian district court heard.<\/p>\n
Silvey, a father of three, also engaged in an online conversation with another user on a pornography website, where his handle was Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.<\/p>\n
In the chat, Silvey described himself as a \u201cFremantle guy\u201d before telling the user: \u201cYou sound amazing \u2026 we have very similar interests, would love to chat more; do you have Signal or Session?\u201d<\/p>\n
The pair moved to an encrypted messaging app, where he said he was \u201cextremely open-minded and obsessed with taboos\u201d and preferred boys older than five before adding that \u201ceight was the perfect age\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to make out with little ones,\u201d the author said in one message.<\/p>\n
Silvey, who has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, also wrote he was \u201cdrooling\u201d over a sexually explicit photo of a naked man and boy together.<\/p>\n
Judge Hayley Cormann said it was very serious and very disturbing offending.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis offending involves children and it is destructive and it is devastating,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The popular author is best known for his 2009 coming\u2011of\u2011age novel Jasper Jones, considered a modern Australian classic and adapted into a feature film and several stage productions.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |When needed<\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n He has also been widely recognised for other books, including Rhubarb, Honeybee \u2013 which won the Australian Indie Book Award in 2021 \u2013 and the children\u2019s novel Runt, which was also made into a film.<\/p>\n Publishers Allen & Unwin and Fremantle Press, which released Rhubarb, stopped promoting his books after Silvey was charged<\/a> and most of his titles were removed from reading lists across the country.<\/p>\n Two charges of producing and possessing further child exploitation material were dropped in May.<\/p>\n In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline<\/a> on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation<\/a> on 1300 657 380<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The award\u2011winning author Craig Silvey sent multiple messages about his sexual desire for young boys and was caught…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-949787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949787","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=949787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1793618539_804_2998.jpg\")
<\/p>\n