A "self-delusional" coach who manipulated and abused a child for several years has shown no insight into his crimes and continued justifying his predatory behaviour, a court has heard.
"It's all consistent with someone who is at pains to intellectualise and obscure his own intent and his own desires," prosecutor David Swan told the ACT Magistrates Court on Friday.
"To explain to himself and to others why he did what he did."
The 72-year-old coach still cannot be named due to a court suppression order.
Despite having admitted to several charges, including multiple counts of committing an act of indecency on a child under special care, the man still cavils with certain parts of an agreed statement of facts.
Some of the charges are rolled up to reflect several crimes.
Most importantly, he maintains touching the victim and engaging in disturbingly sexualised conversations under the guise of training was not for his own sexual gratification.
That is, despite numerous diary entries which would suggest the opposite. Mr Swan described this behaviour as "strange credulity".
"[The offender] was completely infatuated with the victim," the prosecutor said and the court agreed.
"This is someone who has fundamentally at multiple points failed to realise the depths of feelings he had for this teenage girl."
The man abused his position as a coach and the victim's desire to play professionally as a way to manipulate her and find ways to be alone together.
That, the court heard, was the most "insidious part of this offending".
The abuse began in recent years when the girl was aged under 16 and her parents hired the man to be a specialist athletics coach.
He found ways to involve himself in more and more aspects of her life and would organise for the pair to spend hours together on a daily basis, eventually without the girl's parents knowing.
He initially tricked the girl into touching her through purported physio "assessments" and made her engage in highly inappropriate conversations.
His offending escalated to asking the victim to fill out a "sexual arousal questionnaire", repeatedly suggesting they have sex, and sharing details of his sexual history.
"Very clearly this is an effort by the offender where he's trying to continually change the dynamic of the relationship. I would say it's far beyond recklessness," the prosecutor told the court.
The coach would eventually profess his love for the victim and threaten to leave the country "if there was nothing between them".
"There is a profound breach of trust that extended not only to the complainant but to her parents, who trusted the offender," Mr Swan said.
"Her love of the sport has effectively been destroyed."
The court previously heard directly from the victim, who described her perpetrator as "selfish, conniving and evil".
"[The offender] single-handedly reached through time and changed the course of my life forever," she said earlier this year.
Mr Swan ultimately asked the court to sentence the offender to full-time imprisonment.
Defence lawyer Tim Sharman asked the magistrate to impose a community-based prison sentence.
Mr Sharman said the defence accepted the behaviour was entirely inappropriate but said his client had proven he could obey community orders after a long stint on bail which was "akin to house arrest".
Magistrate James Lawton has reserved his decision until next month, when he will also hear an application to lift the suppression on the predator's name.
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