"By objectifying these girls you dehumanised them"
Ranpati Amarasinghe, aged 24, of Melbourne, Australia, was jailed for 13 and a half years for a cruel sextortion plot in which he tricked young girls into sending him nude photos.
He convinced several girls as young as 13 to send him nude photos or videos after speaking to them online.
The County Court of Victoria heard that Amarasinghe, who is originally from Sri Lanka, had come to Australia on a student visa and had been working at Woolworths while offending.
In September 2020, after two years of his cruel sextortion scheme, police arrested the student.
Officers seized his iPhone and hard drive and demanded he hand over passwords to his social media accounts.
Police found 42 pictures and two videos of child abuse on his hard drive. Nine images and one video were found on his phone.
Judge Douglas Trapnell said Amarasinghe’s crimes were “cruel” and “inhumane”.
He said: “During this nearly 20-month period you cowardly threatened your victims, callously, brutally and cruelly.
“Your depravity knew no bounds. It was bad enough causing these young, innocent girls to sexually compromise themselves in this way, but to threaten them in the way you did and to carry through with the threats was nothing short of brutal.
“By objectifying these girls you dehumanised them and in the process, you lost your own humanity.”
For the sextortion plot, Amarasinghe used fake names to trick his victims into sending nude photos including the pseudonyms ‘Emma Law’ and ‘John’.
One girl was 13 when she first sent nude pictures and videos of herself to ‘John’ on Snapchat in November 2018.
After refusing to send more lewd content, Amarasinghe threatened to send the nude photos to her family and friends.
He also messaged a few of the girl’s social media contacts and asked them to inform her “this was just the start”.
Another victim’s mother took screenshots of a conversation Amarasinghe had with her daughter to the police after she complied with his demands for nude photos.
He threatened to send the pictures to her Instagram followers if she did not send more material, even after she begged him not to.
He told the victim: “Get ready to be ruined.”
Amarasinghe also asked: “Want me to send these vids to your friends or no?”
He promised the girl that she sent photos once more, he would leave her alone.
Amarasinghe said:
“I am ruining your life and don’t give a s**t. You are a f**king whore.”
A recipient of one of the videos in Amarasinghe’s possession told him:
“If they wanna hoe around let them. You need to chill.
“They don’t know what they are doing, and you could ruin the rest of their life if you spread this s**t.
“You can get in serious trouble too. I have close friends doing years for this s**t.”
A 17-year-old girl from the United States told police that a Snapchat user named ‘John’ had threatened her.
After the pair exchanged photos, Amarasinghe said he would tell her boyfriend they were speaking and demanded photos of her face, breasts and vagina.
He said: “I’m not feeling very nice today so you’re going to send me nude body pics or I’m going to send these to your boyfriend and he’ll break up with you.”
Amarasinghe uploaded a photo of a 19-year-old victim to a pornography website with their full name and social media accounts.
He labelled the photo ‘hot teen’ and sent the victim the message:
“You are going to be on porn.”
On January 25, 2022, Amarasinghe pleaded guilty to 25 counts of obtaining, publishing, possessing, or transmitting child porn or abuse material.
Judge Trapnell labelled Amarasinghe a “brutal coward”.
He said: “Your offending was protracted, planned, organised, prolific and involved threats.”
Amarasinghe was jailed for 13 and a half years.
He is likely to be deported back to Sri Lanka after serving his sentence.
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