A HUNTER mother who filmed herself sexually assaulting her three young children sent the videos to paedophiles, including one man who she referred to as “Daddy”, because she wanted them to fall in love with her, Newcastle District Court has heard.
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The woman, who cannot be named because it would identify her three children, was re-arraigned on Friday and pleaded guilty to seven counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 10, which each carry a maximum penalty of life in jail, and possession of child abuse material.
A string of other offences, including using a child under 14 to make child abuse material and disseminating child abuse material, will be taken into account when the woman is sentenced next month.
Crown prosecutor Paul Marr told Judge Phillip Mahony that psychologists who assessed the woman had been left uncertain as to the real reasons why she had sexually assaulted her children and then uploaded the videos online.
But he submitted that the woman had not been coerced or threatened into providing the child abuse material to others and had lied to police about that in her first two interviews.
Defence barrister Rebecca Suters said her client was motivated by a “desire to please” the men she was communicating with online. One of those men, referred to in text message exchanges as “Daddy”, described himself as a “pedo” (sic).
“With the idea that that person would love her and want to be with her as a result of what she was sending him,” Ms Suters said.
The sexual assaults spanned more than two-and-a-half years, but the woman stopped a few months before she was arrested in 2016.
Ms Suters said during the woman’s first interview she provided a complete denial of the allegations. In her second interview with police she made limited admissions, but blamed others for her behaviour. In her third interview, some months after her arrest, she admitted to much of the offending and has since sent letters to her children expressing her “remorse and shame”.
Mr Marr played a portion of her second police interview for Judge Mahony, which showed the woman crying and claiming she had stumbled upon a man sexually assaulting her daughter and had been forced into participating.
“That demonstrates she not only lied to police about the involvement of herself but did so in a compelling and emotive way,” he said.
