A West Wollongong man was jailed for online child sex offences on Thursday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Jack McCall appeared via audio-visual link from custody before Judge Andrew Haesler.
McCall, who has COVID-19, was in an isolated cell in prison as he heard his sentence read out.
His mother attended the court in person.
McCall was charged with three counts of using a carriage service to plan or procure for sexual activity a person aged under 16 and publishing child abuse material.
Police were informed McCall was using an online platform to engage with teen girls early in 2021.
They found evidence the 27-year-old man had engaged in "sexually explicit or romantically inclined" conversations online with five girls aged under 16. The contents of those conversations cannot be published.
He also sent one of the children a photograph of his erect penis.
In all of the conversations he represented himself as a teenage boy, in some instances using photographs of himself when he was younger to substantiate the lie.
McCall also sent sexual stories about a seven-year-old child to an online friend; Judge Haesler described the stories as "asinine, rambling, crude and almost incoherent".
Judge Haelser said he needed to balance the seriousness of McCall's offending and history of related behaviour, with his early guilty plea, intellectual disabilities, youth and struggles with living in prison.
McCall has Asperger's Syndrome, which Judge Haesler described for the court as: "A developmental disorder that affects how the brain processes information.
"It can lead to inappropriate, immature or delayed understanding of sexual codes of conduct and can sometime result in sexually inappropriate behaviour"
He has also been diagnosed with ADHD and has "long-standing behavioural issues".
He does not feel safe in prison and has difficulty maintaining secure housing and employment when out of prison.
Judge Haesler sentenced McCall to a total of five years and six months in jail, with a non-parole period of three years, beginning April 25 2021. He will be eligible for parole from April 24 2024 and his sentence ends on October 24 2026.
Read more Illawarra court and crime stories here.
To read more stories, download the Illawarra Mercury news app in the Apple Store or Google Play.
