By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Botanic Ridge man has been jailed over his persistently “abhorrent” and “depraved” promotion of incest and other sex acts with children.
Prasanga Kariyawasam, 43, pleaded guilty at the Victorian County Court to 26 charges spanning three-and-a-half years from 2018 including while on bail.
The charges included accessing, transmitting, soliciting and possessing child abuse material on hundreds of occasions.
Some of the online exchanges were with people that Kariyawasam believed to be 11 years old and 14 years old.
He also engaged in indecent communications – text-based chats about his interest in children 5-11 years old, child porn and incest.
Online, he’d urge “like-minded individuals” to engage in sex acts with young children and to share images of the victims with him.
On one occasion, he chatted about whether to take up an offer to “rent” a child for a week.
“Your conduct serves to foster and normalise the sexual exploitation of young children, which is truly abhorrent,” sentencing judge Michael O’Connell said on 2 October.
A large amount of the seized videos and images were category-1 – the most explicit and serious category, he noted.
The judge said he needed to make a measured assessment despite his emotional and “almost visceral” repugnance towards the material.
Kariyawasam tried to evade detection using fake names on the KIK chat app, private web browsing, Virtual Private Network and encryption, and in defiance of his bail conditions.
After being raided and charged by police several times since 2018, he was caught out again while on bail by a United States FBI agent on KIK in late 2021.
Kariyawasam had argued that his offending was fueled by drug abuse. Meth made him “uncontrollable”, he claimed.
Judge O’Connell says Kariyawasam’s underlying motivations for offending appeared untreated.
The accused seemed to have “limited insight”, was diagnosed with narcissistic symptoms, and his expressions of regret and shame reportedly lacked depth.
The alleged link between his own alleged sex abuse as a child and his deviant behaviour was at this stage “speculative”.
Kariyawasam didn’t seek to address his underlying reasons for offending while out on bail, the judge noted.
He was assessed as a moderate to high risk of re-offending, with “guarded” rehabilitation prospects.
A long eligibility period for parole was deemed important for his rehabilitation and for community protection.
Kariyawasam was jailed for six years and eight months, with a non-parole period of three years and nine months.
His term includes 659 days in pre-sentence detention.
The judge ordered that Kariyawasam would be a registered sex offender for life.
