STATE OF TASMANIA v SAMUEL DARREN CONNELL 2 FEBRUARY 2022
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Samuel Connell, you plead guilty to 11 counts of involving a person under 18 years in production of child exploitation material and one count of possession of child exploitation material. The crimes were committed during the period of about 18 months between 1 June 2018 and 29 December 2019. At the time you were aged 21 and 22. Each crime was committed against a different young female but involved similar circumstances. There were 11 victims. They were aged between 9 and 15 and lived either in Australia or the US. You used internet platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, Skype and YouTube via electronic devices operated from your bedroom at home to approach the girls and have them send you sexually intimate images of themselves. Your methods included to assume false on-line identities, both male and female, of different ages. You then resorted to various forms of psychological manipulation and threats to either persuade or force the girls to transmit the images. You had searched the internet for methods of indoctrination. You downloaded an application on your phone to enable you to record still and moving images without alerting the sender of the recording and in order to preserve images sent through the various platforms. In this way you were able to retain images from platforms like Snapchat and Instagram which would otherwise have been deleted automatically or at the choice of the sender. Once recorded, the images were organised into folders, carefully curated with individual sub-folders recording your interactions with each of the victims by name, including details your psychological manipulation. In some cases you maintained thorough records of personal information you had been able to obtain from them including names, addresses, dates of birth, passwords and, in some cases, details of members of their immediate family and friends. In your bedroom the police found your phone, a laptop, a notebook and three hard drives. Two hard drives were concealed, and the other hard drive and the notebook were in a safe which was later opened by a locksmith after you refused to unlock it. You did not provide the password for your phone and partial access was only obtained after specialist assistance from Victoria Police.
The first victim was an 11 year old girl who lived in the US. You first contacted her on 1 June 2018. You told her you were 17. She told you she suffered from mental health issues and took medication. Over a period of about two months you befriended her, normalised sexual talk, cultivated her trust and confidence and eventually her subservience, and instructed her to send increasingly more intimate images of herself. The images, all of which you recorded, were in the form of videos and live streaming, and progressed to her fully exposing her breasts, vulva and vagina and engaging in explicitly sexual conduct including her manipulating her breasts and masturbating. One of the ways you ensured her subservience was by threats to disclose her secrets to her mother. You directed her to involve her younger sister. In total over 600 images of this victim were recovered of which more than 250 were child exploitation material.
The second victim was a 12 year old girl with an intellectual disability who lived in Sydney. You contacted her on 1 September 2018, and over the following month, cultivated her trust and encouraged her to produce and send increasingly intimate images, progressing from her breasts to her fully exposed anus, labia and vulva. At your direction she sent a video of herself masturbating. You told her that you were her best friend, discouraged disclosure to others, and threatened to distribute images to ensure her compliance. On one occasion, when she complained of chest pain and was obviously distressed, you directed her to masturbate and threatened to send the images to her friends if she did not obey your instruction. The police recovered 70 child exploitation videos of this victim.
The third victim was a 15 year old girl who lived in Queensland. Using a false personality you contacted her on 28 October 2018 and befriended her. She told you that she was isolated from her family. You introduced a second online persona. After cultivating her psychological dependence on you, you asked her to send images and then demanded that they become increasingly intimate, including of her exposing her vagina and breasts, of her masturbating and putting her fingers into her vagina. By about six weeks after your first contact you were sending constant daily demands for images, including while she was at school, and compelled compliance by various psychological means including by playing one of your personas against the other, threats of public release of images, and threats to go to her home. She found it so stressful that she discontinued all social media for a period. Even after that you found her again until she blocked you permanently.
The fourth victim was a 10 year old girl who lived in Victoria. You contacted her on Instagram on 20 January 2019, told her that you were a 12 year old girl and sought to befriend her. During the course of that day you manipulated her into sending you images of her underwear. You encouraged her to “show it all” and said you would keep her safe. She sent a series of images showing her torso from the side with and without underwear but with her groin obscured from view.
The fifth victim was a 9 year old girl from the US. You initiated contact on 3 March 2019 via Instagram and told her that you were 16 and lived in the US. Your contact continued for about two weeks. You established dominance over her by threatening to talk to her parents and reveal private information. You used your dominance to demand she send sexual images despite her begging to not have to send them. The images progressed to images of her naked breasts and vulva, and of her masturbating. You compelled her compliance with threats such as “last chance for safety”, despite her distress.
The sixth victim was a 14 year old girl from the US. During a period of about six weeks between 3 April and 18 May 2019 you contacted her, encouraged her trust and affection, and then established control through threats of contacting her parents and her friends. You demanded that she act “like a slut” for you. You made recordings of live feeds during which you directed her to expose her breasts and vulva.
The seventh victim was a 15 year old girl from the US who you contacted through Instagram. In May and June 2019 you pressed her to send photos of herself in her underwear, in other various stages of undress and then of her exposed vulva. Eight of the images you saved were child exploitation material.
The eighth victim was a girl appearing on the images you saved to be in her early teens. On 21 July 2019 you asked her to provide images with her belly exposed and threatened to hack her computer and post private information if she did not comply. You compelled her to send about 24 images showing her belly and some with her bra rolled up partially exposing her breasts.
The ninth victim was an 11 year old girl from the US. Your first screen shot of her was taken on 6 October 2019. Between then and 14 October you recorded her from YouTube exposing her breasts at your direction. You manipulated the recording to as to enable you to watch it in slow motion.
The tenth victim was a 12 year old girl from the US. You used a false name and told her you were 13. By text message conversations you persistently asked for photos of her naked vagina until she complied via Snapchat. You took a screen shot of the image against her wishes, and she found out from family and friends that it had been posted online.
The eleventh victim was a 14 year old girl from the US. You contacted her, pretended you were 15, sought to befriend her and encouraged her to trust you. You demanded images of her belly and threatened to send images to her friends and family if she did not comply. You had found out her father’s name and researched his Instagram profile page. She sent images of her belly and you pressed her for images of her breasts. She sent two images of her bra cup lowered to expose one of her nipples.
In involving each of the 11 girls in the production of child exploitation material you produced 334 images and 169 videos which were Category 1, Interpol Baseline, in accordance with the Australian Child Abuse Categorisation Schema. It relates to pre-pubescent material showing involvement in or witnessing sexual acts, or material focussing on the anal or genital area of a child. The other material, 56 images and 14 videos were Category 2 which involves material not classed as Category 1, but relates to images of persons between 13 and 18 years of age engaged in a sexual act or in a sexual context. Because some of the material you produced was forensically recovered from deleted files, not all was in your possession. The possession charge concerns 2 images and 8 videos in Category 1 and 50 images and 19 videos in Category 2. To some extent, the possession charge arises from the other counts, but the steps you took to create the material secretly and then organise and retain it shed light on the level of your sexual interest and criminal culpability.
You were not arrested until 6 May 2021. You are now aged 24. You have no prior convictions. You are unemployed. You lived with your parents and sibling and claim to have never been in a relationship. It is in your favour that you entered an early plea of guilty. It is not disputed that from age 13, for a period of two years, you were yourself the victim of on-line sexual abuse at the hands of paedophiles. You innocently commenced your own YouTube channel but were eventually overcome by on-line requests to expose yourself sexually. The abuse you suffered was particularly associated with persons sexually aroused by exposure of your navel, a characteristic which also influenced some of the demands you made of your own victims, although your demands went much further. I was given a report by Dr Georgina O’Donnell, a forensic psychologist. You were co-operative with her assessment. You accept that you have a sexual interest in females under 18. You are now medicated for the depression which developed after these crimes as a result of your activities being detected. Dr O’Donnell completed a psychometric assessment of your personality and psychopathology. She concluded that you present with features of both schizoid personality disorder and autism spectrum disorder, although within the confines of her assessment she was unable to make a differential diagnosis. Both conditions are enduring and require management rather than cure. Some of the personality features she detected were social detachment and withdrawal, egocentricity, social discomfort and limited social skills, restricted emotional range and fragile self-esteem. You now have insight into the wrongfulness of your behaviour and the need for therapeutic help. She considers that there is a link between the psycho-social impairments she describes and your offences. In essence, she concludes that you were a vulnerable child as a result of your impairments and that you learned dysfunctional sexual behaviour on-line when the subject of abuse. During the course of your own experience you learned skills to interact on-line, thereby fostering your ability to identify, control and exploit the female children in whom you had a sexual interest. Beyond that, the control to which you were subject as a victim of abuse transposed into you enjoying the control and manipulation of your own victims. The combination of your youth, your depression with suicidal ideation and psycho-social impairments may mean that prison will weigh more heavily on you and place you at risk of further adverse effects on your mental health.
The State does not dispute Dr O’Donnell’s opinion that there is a causal connection between your impairments and your criminal acts and that your moral culpability is reduced to some extent. However Dr O’Donnell does not suggest that you did not appreciate that your conduct was wrong. The steps you took to avoid detection and secure the images establish the contrary. Nor does she suggest that there has been some expression of empathy for your victims. What is put is that you have insight into the need for therapy. According to Dr O’Donnell therapeutic steps are required to address and control your future sexual and social functioning, but whatever condition is ultimately diagnosed it is something which cannot be cured. On a couple of occasions you have sought counselling or advice but you have not yet received the therapy you require. Dr O’Donnell does not suggest that therapeutic services will not be available to you while in custody.
The conditions which Dr O’Donnell describes also point to the need for a sentence which serves to protect the public. Dr O’Donnell does not suggest that either general or specific deterrence should be moderated or eliminated as sentencing considerations. In my view the court has a duty to mark the seriousness of crimes of this nature as a signal to those who may be tempted to act in a similar way in the future. Such crimes are difficult to detect because they are inherently and intentionally committed in secret, and are insidious. Your conduct continued for about 18 months and affected 11 different girls for varying periods within that time frame. You deliberately targeted each of them and set out to take advantage of the means of psychological manipulation you had learned. Your aim was to have them comply with your demands for your own sexual gratification. As to those who exhibited unwillingness, discomfort or distress, you were careless about it and, worse still, you seemingly took pleasure in it and saw it as a challenge to go further. You cruelly took advantage of some of the images and information you gathered to force them to send more images of an increasingly intimate nature. For some of them you made their lives a misery, prevented by your threats from seeking help from the persons close to them. Sexual crimes against children are presumed to cause harm and it is the role of the courts, as far as it can be achieved, to protect potential victims from online predators. Although you were not physically in contact with these children, you persuaded or forced them to perform sexual acts themselves. Although you are relatively young, the age disparity was still significant in terms of maturity and awareness. Some were very young, before the age of sexual development or experience, and others were in the very early stages. Of course none could lawfully consent. I have no victim impact statements from any of them but it is easy to imagine the type of anxiety, humiliation, distrust and fear of intimate relationships and other psychological impacts which may result. For some the adverse effects may be very long lasting. You are not charged with distributing child exploitation material, but the anguish experienced by at least some of the victims may be added to by forever wondering whether intimate images of them are irretrievably and permanently circulating on the internet.
The Sentencing Act (Tas), s 11, applies to your crimes. I have already mentioned most of the matters which are relevant here. At least six of the children were under 13. One it seems had an intellectual disability. There is no evidence you knew of her disability but the chance always exists that a targeted child may have a vulnerability even beyond his or her age. In one case a sister of a victim was involved. You requested acts which were degrading and humiliating.
All of those factors which make your crimes objectively serious are to be balanced against your relative youth, the absence of prior convictions, your early plea of guilty and the mental impairment I have referred to. But for your youth and impairment I would have sentenced you to imprisonment for five years. I have attempted to fashion orders which balance the need for punishment and strong need for general and personal deterrence, with the community interest in your rehabilitation if that can be achieved. I have concluded that there is sufficient incentive to reform to conditionally suspend part of the term and allow for parole. Because of the need for punishment the allowance for parole will be something above the minimum term despite your lack of prior convictions. You pose an obvious future risk of committing another reportable offence under the Community Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2005.
Samuel Connell, you are convicted on each count. I make an order directing that the Registrar under the Community Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2005 cause your name to be placed on the Register and that you comply with the reporting obligations under that Act for a period 10 years from your release. I impose one sentence. You are sentenced to imprisonment for four years from 9 December 2021, the day you were taken into custody. I suspend one year of that term for three years from your release on the following conditions:
- you are not to commit another offence punishable by imprisonment during that period. If you breach that condition you will be required to serve the term unless that is unjust.
- you will subject to the supervision of a Community Corrections officer. The conditions referred to in s 24(5B) of the Sentencing Act apply to this condition and will be set out in the order you will be given. These include that you must report to a Community Corrections officer within three clear days of your release.
- in addition to the core conditions, the order will also include the following special conditions that you must, during the operational period of the order:
- attend educational and other programs as directed by a Community Corrections officer;
- submit to the supervision of a Community Corrections officer as required by that officer;
- submit to medical, psychological or psychiatric assessment or treatment as directed by a Community Corrections officer;
- comply with any direction given by a Community Corrections officer prohibiting, restricting or limiting your access to electronic or telecommunication devices, the internet and social media applications.
I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served two years of the operative part of the term of imprisonment I have imposed. I make an order that the following items be forfeited to the State: IPhone 7 mobile phone, exhibit number 375151705, Sega portable hard drive serial number NAAEGJWB, exhibit number 375151645, a Dell laptop serial number 9Q6L703, exhibit 375151420, Orico hard drive, exhibit number 375151486, Weston digital hard drive, exhibit number 375151486 and Spirax notebook, exhibit number 375151813.