WARNING: Distressing content
Ranpati Amarasinghe punched the letters into his phone before hitting send on a message to a stranger.
“Whores deserve to be exposed,” it read.
He was referring to a lewd video of a young girl which he had just sent to the random recipient’s account on Instagram.
“If they wanna hoe around let them. You need to chill,” the Instagram recipient replied.
“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.”
Australian Federal Police swooped on 24-year-old Amarasinghe at his Melbourne home in September 2020, almost two years after his offending began.
Amarasinghe was deep into an ongoing sextortion scheme in which he’d convinced several young girls to send him lewd images or videos after contacting them on social media.
A court was told if his demands for more content weren’t met he would threaten to send the material to their family and friends.
He then followed through with those threats.
Amarasinghe’s offending was so callous County Court JudgeDouglas Trapnell described the case as the worst he’d seen in his career.
The Sri Lankan national pleaded guilty on Tuesday to 25 charges relating to obtaining, publishing, possessing or transmitting child porn or abuse material.
“Your crimes are absolutely abominable,” Judge Trapnell told the court.
“You’re a horrible person.”
Here’s the full story of Amarasinghe’s crimes that floored the Victorian judge.
THE MAN BEHIND “JOHN LARRY”
“BW” was just 13 when she started talking to a “John” on Snapchat in November 2018.
“John”, unbeknown to her, was actually Amarasinghe who asked her to send naked images and videos of herself.
She complied but when she declined to send more “John” threatened to send the material to her family and friends, court documents revealed.
Amarasinghe then sent messages to the social media contacts of “BW” which read: “Tell her that this is just the start”.
Her story was not dissimilar to another victim dubbed “ZZ”, also aged 13.
The court was told she and “John” started talking on Snapchat before he found her Instagram account after she tried to block him.
He threatened to tell her friends she was a “whore” if she didn’t comply and would direct her to perform sexual acts on camera with her face viewable.
But Amarasinghe’s offending didn’t stop there.
A third victim known as “LB” came forward with a similar story about how she started talking to the offender on Instagram and complied with his demands to send nudes before blocking him.
Amarasinghe’s pattern of behaviour was almost predictable now. He found his victim’s Instagram account and threatened to send the material to her followers if she didn’t send him more.
Feeling as though she was backed into a corner, “LB” did what he asked.
Her mother later went to the police with screenshots of her daughter’s conversations with the offender during which he made comments like:
“Get ready to be ruined” and “want me to send these vids to ur friends or no?”.
“LB” pleaded with him to stop.
“I told you I’ll be gone and everything will be gone after you do what I want,” he wrote.
“I am ruining your life and you don’t give a shit. You are a f —king whore”.
Court documents further revealed that in December 2020 a 17-year-old girl known as “MR” gave a statement to police in the US which detailed how she too met a person named “John” over WhatsApp.
She gave “John” her Snapchat details and they began communicating and sharing photos through the platform.
But “John” soon started threatening her by saying he would tell her boyfriend they were talking and demanded she send photos exposing her face, breasts and vagina.
“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,” he said.
He later contacted his victim on Instagram, this time using a different alias “Emma Law”.
“Hey, you remember me right?,” he asked.
“You’re going to do this or I will send it to your entire school.
“Bitch you think I still don’t have ur stuff, I have ur whole f —king vids”.
THE FOLLOW THROUGH
In June 2020, police carried out a search warrant on an Instagram account called “Sarah.lake5” which was later revealed to belong to Amarasinghe.
Court documents revealed he sent three lewd videos of victim “ZZ” to an unknown Instagram user through the chat function in 2018 which prompted the following conversation.
“Did you get it?,” he asked.
“Yea,” the receiver replied.
“Do you know any other guys I should send to? Shall I send to all of ur followers?,” Amarasinghe asked.
“Nah none of my followers know them,” the receiver replied.
Amarasinghe then asked for the names of the victim’s boyfriends before pushing the responder further about whom he could send the explicit content to.
“Are they from ur school?,” he asked.
“No, I live near them,” the receiver replied.
NED-5366 Insta Convo A
“I go to a boarding school. But if you got more send em my way bruh.”
The Instagram user then asked why Amarasinghe was so hellbent on outing these young girls.
“Cuz they are sending nudes to other people when they already have bfs bro. I don’t like that,” he said.
“You know what we call them: Whores. Whores deserve to be exposed.”
Amarasinghe went on to send various compromising videos and images of his victims to their contacts on social media, alongside messages like, “tell me if you want more” and “tell her I’m sending nudes to people she knows”.
He pleaded guilty to eight counts of using a carriage service to transmit child abuse material and one count of publishing child pornography material online.
NED-5366 Insta Convo B
The latter charge related to an incident in March 2019 when the offender uploaded a video of “LB” to an adult pornography website, Xhamster using the alias “John Larry”.
“The offender added LBs full name and the words ‘hot teen’, and also included her Snapchat and Instagram details,” prosecutor’s told the court.
He then sent the victim a message saying “you are going to be on porn”.
JUDGE BLASTS OFFENDER
Australian Federal Police launched an investigation in April 2020 after receiving a tip off from police in the US and UK about underage girls receiving threatening messages from a person seeking child exploitation material.
Officers searched Axjmtzywmarasinghe’s home in June that year where they seized his iPhone and hard drive before he was asked to handover the passwords to his fake social media accounts.
Court documents revealed police found 42 pictures and two videos on his hard drive and nine images and one video on his phone, which were considered child abuse material.
The Sri Lankan national, who is in Australia on a bridging visa while he studies at Deakin University, was arrested in September.
He was initially charged with 16 offences but more were added following further investigations, including publishing child pornography online.
Judge Douglas Trapnell unleashed on Amarasinghe in court on Tuesday, describing him as a “brutal coward”.
“Your crimes are absolutely abominable,” he told the court.
“It was brutal. It was bad enough to compromise these girls sexually but to carry through with threats.
“(You’re) a very horrible person.”
Judge Trapnell said Amarasinghe’s crimes were “as bad as it gets”.
“It’s not just sharing (content) with circle of paedophiles, it’s a punishment for not complying. In some cases they did comply and he still did it,” he told the court.
“It’s really serious. This is as bad as it gets. I have never seen anything as bad as this in my career.”
Amarasinghe is likely to be sentenced to a lengthy prison term before being deported to Sri Lanka.
He will be sentenced on February 24.
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