Pilbara sex offender sentenced to 12 years jail

A long-term Roebourne resident arrested under the ongoing West Pilbara police investigation into child sexual abuse has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for 27 sexual offence charges, including inducing children to have sex for money and recording the acts without their knowledge.

Sydney Emmett Evans, 58, pleaded guilty to inducing several girls aged 13-16 to perform sexual acts on separate occasions between 2015 and 2016 and recording them with a concealed video camera.

It is believed in each instance he offered the victims between $50 and $100 in exchange.

Evans also stood charged with a separate series of sexual assaults against an adult woman while she was unconscious, some of which he also recorded.

In sentencing Evans in Karratha District Court last week, Judge Vicki Stewart called the footage “disturbing” and said her sentence needed to protect vulnerable women and children in the community.

“You took advantage of each of the children’s vulnerability due to their life circumstances,” she said.

“You sought to corrupt (them) by offering them money and other inducements in exchange for sexual favours.”

She sentenced him to 12 years for the offences — six years and three months for his offending against four children, and five years and nine months for the sexual assaults on the adult woman.

Director of Public Prosecutions prosecutor Benjamin Stanwix told the court the offending was particularly serious because it had been committed against multiple victims over a long period.

“It involved ... again and again a deliberate targeting of vulnerable victims, not only by their youth in the case of the children involved, but also by their poverty,” he said.

Mr Stanwix also argued there was a heightened need for deterrence when sentencing cases as part of the West Pilbara investigation, to deter other potential offenders and “(take) the blinkers off” residents of the communities where this kind of abuse was happening.

“The message from the court needs to be that these sorts of matters will be investigated and they will be prosecuted and they will be punished,” he said.

About 45 people have so far been charged with more than 350 charges under the investigation, which is believed to be the most arrests from any abuse investigation in regional WA.

Evans’ sentence was backdated to October 26, 2016, when he went into custody, and he will be eligible for parole.