A disgraced former Hunter Catholic priest who exchanged "depraved" child abuse material and used messaging apps to try to procure three teenagers for sex, offering cash and Apple gift cards, has been jailed for a maximum of six years and six months.
Guy Norman Hartcher, now 79, was the Dungog-Gresford parish priest in the late 1990s before he was stood down in 2004 and eventually sacked by the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in 2006.
After a car crash in 2002 left him with an acquired brain injury, Hartcher spent the past 20 years managing a house for retired priests in Sydney before becoming the target of an investigation by the NSW Child Exploitation Internet Unit Sex Crimes Squad.
Hartcher was arrested a few days before Christmas 2024 after he arranged to meet a person he believed was a teenage boy at Pendle Hill in Sydney's west.
The boy, "Ben", who had told Hartcher he was "nearly 15", was actually an undercover police officer using an assumed online identity.
Hartcher had exchanged sexualised messages and child abuse material with the undercover officer for days before agreeing to meet.
When police approached his car, Hartcher told them he knew the person he was expecting to meet was underage.
"I thought I was meeting this fellow Ben, who I met online, I'm guessing two to three weeks ago," Hartcher said when asked why he was at the location.
"I knew he was underage and I'm assuming he is not here, I'm assuming he is you."
Hartcher said he and "Ben" had engaged in "general conversations but sexual-based discussion" and he couldn't remember who suggested the pair meet up.
Hartcher had also been pursuing two other people he believed were teenage girls, with both online conversations featuring persistent and graphic messages.
In one case, he offered $50 to meet up for sex.
In another, he sent Apple gift cards and discussed meeting a 14-year-old for what he described as "sexual training".
Hartcher had also spent most of 2024 using two messaging applications to engage in highly sexualised and abhorrent conversations with a number of people in Australia and overseas about child sexual abuse, according to an agreed statement of facts.
Much of Hartcher's offending is too graphic to publish.
Hartcher was arrested and spent five days behind bars before being granted bail.
Hartcher faced a sentence hearing in July, during which his lawyers argued his mental functioning and capacity to reason had been impaired due to his brain injury.
Psychiatrist Dr Olav Nielssen gave evidence the 79-year-old's frontal lobe, which controls personality, self-awareness and impulse control, had been damaged in the accident.
Judge Mahony accepted the brain injury had impaired Hartcher's judgment and reduced his inhibition.
But he said the injury did not explain or justify the "significant depravity" of the hundreds of texts Hartcher had sent.
Hartcher had denied any interest in children, but Judge Mahony found he had a "clear interest in paedophilia," which he said was "evidenced by the content of the child abuse material he so actively engaged with and created".
Judge Mahony found the three procurement offences were among the most serious examples of their kind.
He noted the persistent communications, the age difference between Hartcher and the people he believed were children, the sexualised material exchanged and the absence of any voluntary decision by Hartcher to stop.
"This offending was motivated by sexual gratification and I do not accept that it was perpetrated merely for reasons of "sexual fantasy"," Judge Mahony said.
Hartcher also transmitted, accessed or solicited child abuse material in conversations with other users, sending 32 images of actual children to 10 people.
Some of the material involved children as young as four or five, while Hartcher also produced hundreds of messages containing descriptions of child sexual abuse.
Judge Mahony said general deterrence was of paramount importance in child sexual offending.
He jailed Hartcher for a maximum of six years and six months, with a non-parole period of three years, expiring on August 15, 2029.
His mobile phone and laptop were forfeited and he will be on the child sex offender registry for 15 years after his release.
