From having "the world at his feet" and preparing to compete at the Olympics to a cell at Canberra's jail, a professional sportsman and stuntman's steep fall from grace is complete.
Top BMX rider Rhys Karl Kember, 34, can now be unmasked as a serial child sex offender after he was sentenced in the ACT Supreme Court on Monday to three years in jail.
Chief Justice Lucy McCallum ordered Kember, who was also a stuntman in the Fast & Furious series, to serve eight months of the term behind bars.
Kember was seemingly on top of the world just two years ago, when he appeared in Nutri-Grain's "unstoppable stories" commercials while on track for a spot at the Tokyo Olympics.
As it turned out, he had to be stopped from manipulating a succession of vulnerable girls by police, who arrested and charged him with a string of child sex offences in May 2020.
Kember initially denied wrongdoing but changed his tune in March, on the first day of his trial, by pleading guilty to six charges that related to five teenage girls.
He admitted three counts of soliciting child abuse material, and single charges of procuring a child for sexual activity, possessing child abuse material and transmitting indecent material.
In sentencing on Monday, Chief Justice McCallum detailed the "corruption of youth" Kember embarked upon for nearly four years.
She found the athlete's first offence, committed between June 2016 and November 2017, was his most serious.
This crime involved Kember, who was in regular Snapchat contact with a teenage girl, manipulating the victim into sending him nude pictures.
He did this through methods that included telling the girl, who eventually relented, that she would comply "if you really care for me".
Kember met his second victim through his involvement in cheerleading and had her, when she was 16, send him sexually explicit images he screenshotted and kept.
Chief Justice McCallum said the second victim had provided the court with an impact statement, describing how she had confided in Kember about her mental health struggles.
The judge said Kember's offending had caused this girl to not only lose her trust in her confidante, but also her faith in the therapy she required to deal with her "significant" issues.
Kember committed the procuring offence in December 2019, when a 15-year-old girl asked him via Instagram if he could provide her with alcohol.
He replied he would do so in exchange for "proper pics", requesting "boobs at least".
Kember later proposed that the girl perform oral sex on him when he dropped off the drinks. While the stuntman did take alcohol to the girl at her school, the planned sexual act was not carried out.
"The fact he was prepared to deliver alcohol to a 15-year-old at school during a school day is troubling in that it indicates a corruption of youth of a different kind," Chief Justice McCallum said.
Kember's next offence of soliciting child abuse material was similar in that he used the lure of alcohol to request explicit photographs of a teenage girl.
When this girl refused to give him any, he accessed her Instagram account and saved pictures of the victim in her swimmers.
Kember then had sexualised Snapchat conversations with his fifth victim - the cheerleading girl's younger sister - in January 2020.
When he was arrested four months later, police found his mobile phone contained secret folders in which Kember had stored 54 images of child abuse material.
Chief Justice McCallum said on Monday that Kember had minimised his crimes, but she did not accept claims he had blamed his offending solely on the "groupie culture" of BMX.
She ultimately found his crimes were opportunistic rather than predatory, saying the man had good prospects of reforming himself and was likely to "embrace rehabilitation".
Kember will be freed from jail on a recognisance release order in February 2023.
His identity had previously been the subject of a non-publication order, which has now been revoked.
