Court to decide if serial WA paedophile should remain in community
A former athletics coach who groomed and abused several young girls and breached his bail conditions three times after being released will remain in the community until the court makes a decision on his supervision order in June.
Ross Finch O'Brien, 68, was first sentenced to four years in jail in 2000 for abusing five girls aged between seven and 12 who he was coaching in a Little Athletics program.
Between 1991 and 1999, O'Brien befriended the parents of some children before touching the young girls over the clothing or near their genitals and kissing them on the mouth.
After taking part in a sex offender treatment program, O'Brien was released on parole in 2002 but was sent back to jail in 2007 after abusing two young sisters he was babysitting.
O'Brien, who had again befriended the mother of the girls, abused the sisters several times and on one occasion penetrated the eight-year-old. He also recorded and photographed the victims.
At the time of his arrest, police found more than 7000 images and video files of young children being abused as well as several short stories about child pornography in his computer.
He was sentenced to nine years and two months in jail but was released again in 2015 under a strict supervision order subject to 45 stringent conditions, including the prohibition to collect, in electronic or permanent form, images of children.
Shortly after being released, O'Brien breached his supervision order by going to the home of a sex worker to access her services.
He breached the order again a year later when he was found with several non-sexual images of children cut from magazines and newspapers stored along with his adult pornography.
O'Brien pleaded guilty of the offences at Busselton Magistrates Court in December 2016 and was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, suspended for two years.
While he hadn't committed any further offences since 2016, psychological reports showed O'Brien continued to have an "entrenched and ongoing sexually deviant interest in young girls".
Dr Gosia Wojnarowska, who diagnosed O'Brien with paedophilia in 2016, said the 68-year-old's behaviour could escalate once he felt "secure in his ability to deceive".
Dr Wojnarowska's findings were echoed in a report by psychologist Sarah Ballantyne in March 2019, which found O'Brien had a tendency to "test boundaries" and showed "resistance or rejection" to supervision.
She said O'Brien failed to take responsibility for his behaviour, and continued to fantasise about young women despite denying he had an interest in prepubescent girls.
"Though some improvement has been reported ... he has failed to engage meaningfully with offence and risk-specific attempts to discuss his sexual functioning, interests and strategies for managing or appropriately meeting those needs," she said.
Both Dr Wojnarowska and Ms Ballantyne found O'Brien was a serious danger to the community and needed to remain under supervision.
The 68-year-old will undergo an examination by psychiatrist Dr Wojnarowska and psychologist Jule Hasson before facing the WA Supreme Court in June 3, when a decision will be made about extending his supervision order.
It is anticipated that O'Brien, who lives in Busselton, will move to Pinjarra to live with family.