By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A “depraved” online sex predator who solicited explicit images from children as young as 12 must report to authorities for the rest of his life.
Perry Graham, 25, of Noble Park North, traded the images and videos like boys swapped football cards, County Court judge Paul Higham said on 18 February.
Under a username ‘Ray Quasigod’, he chatted online with children between 12 and 17 and directed them to perform sex acts or send lewd pictures.
His language showed an “entrenched sexual depravity”.
A total of 1140 child abuse images of victims as young as eight were found on his laptop, phone and tablet seized by police in a raid of his home in early 2017.
Graham pleaded guilty to more than 20 charges including soliciting and transmitting child abuse material online as well as grooming and procuring children under 16 for sexual activity.
He’d developed a “chilling and casualised” indifference to his victims – and persistent, threatening and predatory behaviour to them, Judge Higham said.
“You were going on a hunt to see what was out there in the virtual world.”
With few friends, Graham – who grew up in Springvale – was described as living in the virtual world and shunning the outside one.
In online gaming forums, he contacted long term intimate partners that he hadn’t met in person, the judge said.
Judge Higham noted Graham’s relevant prior history.
Graham was placed on the sexual offenders register in 2015 after being convicted for having sex with a then-14-year-old ‘girlfriend’.
He then continued chatting with minors and transmitting child-abuse imagery between 2016-’19 – even after being raided and re-arrested in 2017.
After police seized his electronic devices, Graham acquired new ones and continued to offend.
Judge Higham noted Graham’s moderate-to-high risk of re-offending. He was particularly concerned by Graham’s continual denials and minimising of his offences.
According to a pysch assessment, Graham could not recall the offending and said it didn’t sound like something he’d do.
Graham had not yet undergone sex-offender treatment due to delays in his case.
“It seems most regrettable that your rehabilitation and the protection of the community have been ill-served by (the) delay,” Judge Higham said.
Graham was still serving up to four years jail handed down by the County Court in late 2019 for similar but fewer offences between 2016 and 2019.
Taking that sentence into account as a totality, Judge Higham jailed Graham for three years and eight months with a 15 month non-parole period.
It effectively extended Graham’s jail time by 11 months, and non-parole period by 10 months.
Judge Higham ordered Graham must report as a registered sex offender for the rest of his life.
