Disturbing content warning
A homosexual indigenous youth worker could walk free in less than a year after being jailed in Queensland for raping a four-year-old boy, molesting a second infant, and sharing thousands of child abuse material images and videos with an online paedophile ring.
Torres Strait Islander predator Devante Lorenz KR Richardson, 26, pleaded guilty to 22 charges including rape, making child abuse material and indecent treatment of children under 12, and was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment by Judge William Everson in Mackay District Court on Wednesday.
But despite calling Richardson’s offences “completely disgusting”, Judge Everson set parole eligibility for August 2026 since the sex predator had already spent two years in custody, the Daily Mercury reported.
Richardson, who worked for Mackay Regional Council at the Sarina Youth Centre and for government-funded mental health charity Headspace, was caught in 2023 after Northern Territory Police identified him while investigating another paedophile, and he was arrested in the Whitsundays.
The court heard Richardson agreed to molest and orally rape his four-year-old victim and film it for money, but did not end up getting paid. He then filmed himself molesting a 23-month-old boy twice in one day and sent the files to his contact in the NT.
Richardson also sent 116 other paedophiles child abuse material involving children ranging in age from newborn to seven, and police described the thousands of files as “some of the worst examples of its kind”.
The paedophile ring encouraged each other to “seek out and violate young children”, the court heard.
Barrister Scott McLennan argued his client should only get eight years in jail, and the court heard Richardson was bullied for being a homosexual in high school and was also allegedly the victim of abuse himself.
Header image: Left, right, Devante Lorenz KR Richardson (Facebook).
