3 March 2022 07:12 pm Views - 8322
A Sri Lankan international student who convinced young girls to send him lewd images and videos before sending the content to their families and friends has been sentenced to 13½ years behind bars by Victoria’s County Court.
The 24 year-old student, faced 25 charges relating to obtaining, possessing, publishing or transmitting child porn or abuse material.
He appeared on Wednesday in Victoria’s County Court, where Judge Douglas Trapnell described the accused’s crimes as “inhumane” and referred to his online conversations as “chilling”.
“It serves to demonstrate the depths you were prepared to plunge to in your perverted and quite frankly inhumane mission to completely destroy your victims’ lives,” he told the court.
The Sri Lankan national, who is in Australia on a bridging visa while he studies at Deakin University, coerced young girls into sending explicit images and videos.
If they failed to comply with his demands for more, Amarasinghe sent the initial material to their families and friends.
The court was told that he would threaten the girls, one who was as young as 10 when they started talking, telling them he would “ruin them” and that “whores deserved to be exposed”.
When one of his victims took too long to reply to his request, the student told her he was “going to send them (pictures) all. You’re f--ked”.
The suspect’s offending began in 2018 and continued until 2020 when he was arrested at a home in Doveton that September following an investigation by Australian Federal Police.
The court was told that suspect used fake names such as “John” to contact his victims, some of whom were overseas, on various social media platforms, including Instagram and Snapchat.
In one incident he sent a lewd video of one of his victims to a random male on Instagram before asking where else he should send the content.
The recipient asked why suspect was so hellbent on outing these young girls.
“If they wanna hoe around let them. You need to chill,” the Instagram recipient replied.
“They don’t know what they are doing, and you could ruin the rest of their life if you spread this sh-t. You can get in serious trouble too.
“I have close friends doing years for this s--t.”
When one of suspect’s victims pleaded with him to stop, he told her: “I’ll be gone and everything will be gone after you do what I want.”
“I am ruining your life and you don’t give a sh-t. You are a f--king whore,” he said.
Another victim described suspect as becoming “creepy and weird” after he instructed her to perform lewd acts over WhatsApp.
He then sent her a message a few weeks later calling her a “b--ch”.
“You think I still don’t have ur stuff, I have ur whole f--king vids,” suspect told her.
He also posted a video of one of his victim’s to an adult pornography website and used her real name.
When a victim’s mother messaged suspect and told him his daughter was having suicidal thoughts, he said he hoped she died.
Judge Trapnell said suspect had “callously threatened” his victims and his “depravity knew no bounds”.
“You hid behind the cloak of anonymity while acting as a sexual predator online,” he told the court.
He also described suspect as a “brutal coward”.
“It was brutal. It was bad enough to compromise these girls sexually but to carry through with threats,” he said.
“It’s really serious. This is as bad as it gets. I have never seen anything as bad as this in my career.”
In a statement to his doctor, the student confessed what he did was “terrible” and would “have to face up to the consequences’”.
One of suspect’s victims issued a heartbreaking impact statement in which she described how her “life turned for the worst”.
“Men now scare me,” she said in her statement.
“Wherever I go I constantly feel like I’m being judged. Sometimes I have to find somewhere to hide and just cry.”
Suspect was sentenced to 13 years and six months behind bars, with a non-parole period of eight years and six months.
He will be deported to Sri Lanka once released from custody.