A renowned paedophile is poised to be released on 62 conditions after serving 13 years in a Thai prison for sexually assaulting a girl.
Bradley Pen Dragon, 62, has spent more than half of his life in prison, including holding a knife to a mother as she was loading her child into their car.
He was most recently serving time in a West Australian jail institution for seeking up child abuse material on the internet, with a Supreme Court judgement allowing him to be freed under 60 conditions.
The WA District Court heard Dragon spent almost five hours on a public computer at a backpacker hostel in August of 2017.
Among the terms he searched online were ‘pre-teen porn’ and ‘child incest’. When questioned by police, Dragon denied searching the sickening material.
‘These things just keep popping up when I use the internet,’ he told officers at the time.
Judge Hylton Quail didn’t accept Dragon’s explanation for his depraved behaviour, before going onto describe the offending as ‘brazen.’
‘Some of the material, albeit animated, … is horrifying,’ he said.
He was deported to New South Wales before moving to Perth, where Dragon continued to offend.
The convicted paedophile was sentenced to five years behind bars for holding a knife to a mother, before he was locked up again for looking up the child abuse material just two days after being released.
He used a computer at a Northbridge backpacker hostel to access the twisted imagery.
Dragon has been diagnosed with ‘paedophilic disorder’ of the non-exclusive type.
He previously told a psychiatrist that ‘much of the society doesn’t agree with laws relating to the restriction of access to pornographic material about children or sexual contact with children, and much like homosexual relationships, this may be something which is legalised in the future’.
The 62-year-old has been waiting for a Supreme Court decision since completing his time in December, 2021.
They were deciding whether Dragon is still considered ‘high risk and serious offender’, with Justice Larissa Strk saying he could be released under a strict set of 62 conditions.
Dragon will be placed under a 10-year supervision order that includes him being electronically monitored, lives at a specified address and is subject to a curfew.
He will also have to provide verbal or written accounts of all of his movements and banned from having any contact with a child under the age of 18 unless approved.
The 62-year-old will have to undergo councilling, including anti-libidinal treatment, after he agreed it was a good idea.
Dragon also told the court he would be willing to undergo physical castration, but a phyciatrist insisted there was no clinic in Australia who would offer such an operation.
WA’s Shadow Treasurer and spokesman Steve Thomas said releasing Dragon was ‘absolutely worrying’ and said the government should be taking a harder stance on repeat offenders.
‘I think we’ve developed to a stage where we’re quite soft on law and order issues these days, and it’s time for a far bigger focus on holding people responsible for their behaviour,’ he said.
‘I absolutely believe that a tougher on crime approach and going back to making the punishment fit the crime is where we want to see this government and this society go.’
Dragon is set to be released from jail in mid-June.