Hector Ulises Contreras, 49, tries to hide his face from the media’s cameras as he approaches the court for his sentencing hearing earlier this month. Photo: Albert McKnight.
CONTENT WARNING: This article refers to child abuse.
A married man avoided being sent to jail when he was sentenced for having numerous sexual conversations with a person he thought was a 14-year-old girl, but who turned out to be an undercover police officer.
In May 2022, the then-47-year-old Hector Ulises Contreras initiated a conversation with a user named ‘Paris’ on the social networking website Chatiw.
‘Paris’, in reality an undercover police officer, told him she was 14, but he still began to talk to her in a sexually explicit way.
He sent her his name on Skype and told her, “You look 18”.
He had numerous conversations with her on Skype and by phone between May and July 2022. They were often sexually explicit and some lasted for over an hour.
Contreras told ‘Paris’ he’d call her so she wouldn’t have to use her phone credit, and her mother wouldn’t ask who she’d been talking to.
When she said she hadn’t told anyone about him, he said, “Cool, I’m your secret and you are mine”.
In June, he told her he’d be in Sydney the following month and expressed an interest in meeting her in person.
He continued to discuss meeting up over the following days, suggesting they watch television but joked there may be “kissing and stuff instead”.
Hector Ulises Contreras leaving court on an earlier occasion. Photo: Albert McKnight.
Contreras told her he’d take the day off work to spend more time with her and had another sexually explicit conversation with her before police raided his home and arrested him in July 2022.
“I wasn’t sure it was real,” he told them.
He later said he had been talking to ‘Paris’ on a website for people aged over 18, where “everybody lies” and women pretended to be younger than their age.
During Contreras’s sentencing hearing earlier this month, his barrister said he was in a difficult stage of his life when he had been speaking to a number of women online in 2022, “perhaps looking for intimacy”.
The barrister pointed out that when police seized his client’s electronic devices, they didn’t find any child abuse material on them.
When he was sentenced in the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday (22 April), Chief Justice Lucy McCallum accepted that while he believed he was engaging in a “fantasy-style exchange” at the start of his conversations with ‘Paris’, at some stage he knew he was messaging a 14-year-old girl.
Prosecutors argued he engaged in regular and persistent grooming over two-and-a-half months.
But Chief Justice McCallum said there was no real victim, there was some causal impact of his mental condition at the time on his offending, and the language he used during his conversations was not of the degrading, callous or manipulative kind sometimes seen in matters of this nature.
She found that the seriousness of the offence was relatively low and was satisfied his arrest and engagement with supports, including a psychologist, had “a salutary effect” on him, bringing him to a state of genuine remorse.
The chief justice noted he had worked in the IT field, but lost his security clearance due to his offence and did not think he would obtain it again.
Contreras, now 49, pleaded guilty to a single count of using a carriage service to procure a person under 16 for sexual activity.
He was convicted and sentenced to two years and five months’ jail to be served by an intensive corrections order, which is a community-based sentence.
He must also complete 200 hours of community service and undergo psychological treatment as recommended.
If this story has raised any concerns for you, 1800RESPECT, the national 24-hour sexual assault, family and domestic violence counselling line, can be contacted on 1800 737 732. Help and support are also available through the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre on 02 6247 2525, the Domestic Violence Crisis Service ACT 02 6280 0900, the Sexual Violence Legal Services on 6257 4377 and Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency, call Triple Zero.
The average Australian decided the Liberal Party was too far to the right, giving a swing to the… View