A paedophile Asian teacher could walk free in less than six years after pleading guilty to sexually abusing a female student in Western Australia and grooming three other children online.
Harry Sing Wan Lagdon, 29, began abusing one of his students while working as a relief teacher at a regional high school, and sent the then-15-year-old hundreds of explicit photos and videos of himself, with captions describing himself as a “pedo” and his victim as a “slut”.
Then after moving to Perth he groomed three girls aged 12 and 13 online, and District Court of WA Judge Matthew Curwood found in sentencing on Thursday that Lagdon “employed emotional manipulation” and pretended to be a teenage boy to gain their trust, The West Australian reported.
Judge Curwood found that Lagdon sent the girls hundreds of “depraved and offensive” messages, obtained explicit images from two of them.
The judge described the victims as “inherently vulnerable to online predators” and noted “the psychological impact is likely to be profound and long lasting”.
Lagdon in February pleaded guilty to 25 charges, including sexual penetration of a child over 16 under his authority, exposing a child under 13 to indecent matter, procuring or encouraging a child to engage in sexual behaviour, and possessing child exploitation material.
Judge Curwood acknowledged his early guilty pleas, ordered his phone and laptop be destroyed, and sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of five years and nine months.
Lagdon’s lawyer tried to argue that his client and the female high school student were in a “consensual relationship”, but the judge told the court the victim now suffered nightmares and had been profoundly damaged.
Header image: Harry Sing Wan Lagdon (Kalgoorlie Miner).
