A homosexual former NSW Liberal MP has been found guilty of raping and indecently assaulting a 13-year-old boy in a carpark toilet on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
Rory Amon, 37, the former Member for Pittwater, was acquitted of eight child sex charges in the NSW District Court in February, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict two others.
He faced a retrial in the NSW Supreme Court this week on one count each of sexual intercourse with a person aged between 10 and 14, and indecently assaulting a child, and was found guilty by a jury after four hours of deliberation, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Amon’s bail was continued and he will appear in court again on November 27 for a sentencing hearing.
The court heard that the rape took place after Amon met the boy in 2017 while posing as a 17-year-old on gay sex website Squirt, before the conversation moved to Snapchat, where the victim told Amon he was 15.
Amon, who was campaigning for council preselection at the time while working for then-MP Jason Falinski, then met the boy near his apartment block in Mona Vale, and took him to a toilet in a downstairs carpark where the rape and indecent assault occurred.
The former Liberal MP later claimed the boy told him he was 17, and during his first trial his lawyer argued Amon would have assumed anyone he met on Squirt was an adult because of the age requirements, and because it was intended to facilitate adult men meeting for sex.
The victim reported Amon to police in 2022 after seeing his photo in an email sent by Northern Beaches Council in 2020.
Header image: Left, Rory Amon in NSW Parliament (supplied). Right, Amon during his first trial (9News).
