Music tutor gave porn to 7yo girl
Appeal Court quashes extended supervision order
Aguitar tutor gave a 7-year-old female student a cellphone loaded with child pornography and told her to hide it and not tell anyone.
He then touched her on the outside of her shorts and told her she could look at the photos he had loaded.
Logan Paul Hugo, who also had sex with a 14-year-old girl after grooming her on social media, was sentenced to a year and 10 months in prison for these offences in 2021 but has since been released.
He has now successfully appealed against having an extended supervision order (ESO) imposed, which would have allowed probation officers to keep tabs on him.
Hugo’s offences against the two girls spanned nearly a year from 2019 to 2020, when he was 20 to 21 years old.
The offending against the younger girl took place at her home after he had given her a guitar lesson.
In the case of the 14-yearold girl, he went to her house after grooming her through a social media app and gave her an unknown pill — thought to be MDMA — before having sex with her.
When police seized Hugo’s electronic devices they found indecent images, including one of an unknown pre-teen girl performing a sex act on an unknown man.
In 2021, Hugo was convicted of a raft of offences: meeting with a young person following sexual grooming, sexual connection with a person aged 12 to 15, two charges of indecent assault on a girl under 12 and six charges of possessing objectionable publications.
Hugo was subject to release conditions on hi release from prison the following year.
The Department of Corrections then applied for and was granted an ESO.
An ESO is to protect the community from people who pose a “real and ongoing risk” of committing serious sexual or violent offences.
An interim ESO was imposed on Hugo in September 2022 and a further 18-month ESO was handed down in August last year so that he could continue to be monitored.
Among the criteria to be issued with an ESO, as set out in the Parole Act, an offender has to have a “pervasive pattern of serious sexual offending” and display “an intense drive, desire or urge” to commit a sexual offence.
Hugo took his case to the Court of Appeal, arguing that the judge who imposed the ESO was wrong to find that these criteria had been met.
His lawyers disputed that Hugo had displayed a “pervasive pattern” of serious sexual offending, even though he also had a history of minor sexual misconduct when he was younger, in addition to his offending as an adult.
They said there was no evidence he would relapse and that it was no longer possible to say he displayed any intense desire or urge.
The Appeal Court did not hesitate to find Hugo’s sexual offending serious but said his deeds did not follow a “pervasive pattern.”
They quashed the ESO that had earlier been imposed.