An online predator who pretended to be a teenage YouTube star to blackmail hundreds of children into performing sexual acts has been sentenced to 17 years in jail. The 29-year-old Perth man used the social media platform Instagram to target children in Australia and overseas in what has been described as one of the country's worst online child sexual abuse schemes.
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00:00Mohammed Zayn al-Abidin Rashid set up fake accounts using the image of a globally popular
00:0715-year-old YouTube star to contact children online.
00:10Initially, he would ask innocuous questions like, what's your favourite colour?
00:14And send them a picture of the YouTube star he was pretending to be.
00:18He'd then request a photo in return, to which he would usually respond, damn cutie, in a
00:23bid to build up their self-esteem and prey on their vulnerability.
00:27But he would quickly escalate the conversations to sexual scenarios, and threatened to send
00:31the children's responses to family and friends, unless they agreed to perform sexual acts.
00:37The court heard he would tell the children, just do everything I say and I'll leave you
00:41alone after, understood?
00:43The abuse happened over a period of 11 months, targeting 286 victims, the youngest just seven
00:48years old.
00:49In sentencing, WA District Court Judge Amanda Burrows said, the volume of offences was of
00:54such magnitude, there was no comparable case that she could find in Australia.
00:59The court heard he'd been engaging with misogynistic online forums, and his views on women were
01:04a barrier to rehabilitation, with Justice Burrows saying, you began to see women and
01:09girls as objects of gratification rather than people.
01:12These ideas were amplified in the forums you visited.
01:16Rashid was sentenced to 17 years in jail, but will be eligible for parole in nine years,
01:21when he'll be 38 years old.
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