A remorseless Pakistani paedophile childcare worker has been jailed for two years for sexually abusing a four-year-old boy at a Canberra centre, and will likely be deported after completing his sentence.
Muhammad Ali, 31, who is already behind bars for committing similar offences against another boy at the same centre in Belconnen, was sentenced in the ACT Supreme Court on Thursday to two years’ imprisonment with an 18-month non-parole period, and will be sent to immigration detention after his release.
Acting Justice Peter Berman said in sentencing it was “hard to imagine a more serious breach of trust than the abuse of a child in a childcare centre”, and the fact that it was Ali’s second charge made the offence even more serious, ABC News reported.
He noted Ali had shown no remorse and said it was “apparent the young boy … had suffered greatly”, and the court heard the victim had started displaying sexualised behaviours towards other children since the attack.
The boy’s mother told the court the abuse had “tainted our lives forever”, and the father said in his victim impact statement that his son now “lives under a shadow he should never have had to bear”.
“The hardest part has been the loss of his innocence,” the father said.
In August a jury found Ali guilty of one charge of committing an act of indecency on the four-year-old boy, but were unable to come to a majority verdict on a second charge relating to a three-year-old girl.
Ali was found guilty of indecently assaulting another four-year-old boy in 2022, and the first jury was also unable to reach a verdict about allegations relating to the same three-year-old girl. The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions had sought a retrial of the girl’s case.
A pre-sentence report from his first trial found that Ali, who finished high school in Pakistan before moving to Australia to do a Certificate IV in Project Management and obtaining a Diploma in Early Childhood Education, had a history of drug use, mental health issues and unemployment.
He worked as a security guard before starting casual work in childcare in 2014, and admitted using cannabis, cocaine and oxycodone in 2016 to “cope with mental health and personal life circumstances relating to visa and his sexuality”, The Nightly reported.
The mother of Ali’s first victim said her son’s case had been “mishandled” and “swept under the rug” by the private childcare centre, and said she had “massive concerns regarding other potential victims” as parents had still not been informed.
She also questioned how he was able to gain employment in the childcare industry despite his drug use and mental health problems, which included diagnoses of schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder or bipolar affective disorder.
In sentencing Ali to 18 months’ jail with a 12-month non-parole period in late 2023, Justice Belinda Baker found Ali’s offending was sexually motivated, he had not shown any remorse or accepted responsibility, and noted he had been assessed as being at an above average risk of sexual re-offending.
Header image: Ali during a previous court appearance (ABC News).
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