Facebook child grooming 'killed time': man

An "extremely socially isolated" Sydney man who encouraged children to send him explicit material over Facebook says he mainly did it for "time to kill".

Zach Daniel Moore, 25, from Rooty Hill, pleaded guilty to 10 offences including using a carriage service to solicit child abuse material after being arrested in October 2020.

At a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, he apologised for his offending, which he conceded suggested sexual gratification was a factor.

But he said he "mainly done it for time to kill".

"Sometimes when I was doing it I was even watching a movie, I was never just focusing on the chats," he told the Parramatta District Court.

Moore contacted 10 victims over 20 months, culminating in one girl sending him an intimate image.

While pointing to prosecutors' inability to independently verify each victim's age, Hemant Prakash said his client accepted the crimes were "selfish, harmful and self-centred".

But there was no persistent or relentless pursuit of victims or a pre-existing relationship that could amount to a breach of trust, he submitted.

"He says he's 100 per cent responsible and he says sorry in a very straightforward way," Mr Prakash told the court.

Before his arrest, Moore had been applying to become full-time carer for his father, who has joint and weight issues.

His social anxiety made it difficult for him to leave the house without his father.

Prosecutor Bethaney Debenham said the offender was an "extremely socially isolated young man" with a deprived background, and diagnoses of a major depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder.

But those diagnoses only reduced his moral culpability slightly, if at all, and jail time remained the only appropriate sentence, she said.

She submitted Moore sought to leverage an online pseudo-romantic relationship to achieve his goals and consistently requested child abuse material.

"He still couches the real-world consequences of the offending in terms of himself and that his insight into the harm actually occasioned to the victims is still limited," Ms Debenham said.

Moore was arrested after a tip-off from Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency.

At the time, federal police said it worked "tirelessly to track down and charge those who are looking to exploit children".

"Parents and carers should ensure they are having open conversations and talking to their children about their online activity," Acting Sergeant Scott Veltmeyer said.

Moore was remanded in custody until his sentencing on October 14.