A police officer who described himself as "daddy" in online chats with teenage girls and sent a naked photograph to a purported 15-year-old has given a tearful apology for his shameful and embarrassing conduct.
"I would like to apologise to my colleagues, and family and my wife," James Anthony Gwynne, 30, told a sentence hearing on Tuesday.
"I've disgraced them through my actions and ... I'll do what I can to become a functioning member of society again.”
Gwynne pleaded guilty to six charges including the transmission and soliciting of child abuse material, engaging with someone under 16 years old outside Australia for the purposes of sexual activity, and using a carriage service in an offensive manner.
In chats from February to April 2022, the 30-year-old took a naked photo of himself holding his genitals next to his police shirt and discussed fantasies of what he would do to young girls, people's daughters and their dogs.
These chats included claims he would take the virginity of his own future daughters.
"Would you want a cute Australian cop to put a baby inside you now that you’re older? LOL" the Liverpool man said in one chat.
On Tuesday, he denied he had a persistent sexual interest in children, saying instead that he was looking for a "cheap wank".
"My fantasies are pretty f***ed up and I've never told anyone because I will go to jail," he wrote to one user on Whisper.
One of the people he chatted with in April 2022 was a US investigator from the Human Trafficking Investigators Taskforce using an assumed online identity of a 15-year-old.
This was the individual he sent the naked photograph to.
Gwynne was arrested weeks after his explicit chats with US law enforcement and is suspended from the police force while his resignation is processed. He now works as a traffic controller.
He told Campbelltown District Court he had been looking for "cheap sexual gratification".
"I felt in those mornings when I was engaging in those chats that I was looking for a cheap way to get my rocks off.”
Defence barrister Jack Tyler-Stott asked Gwynne how he now looked his three brothers in the eye.
“I don't,” the cop said during tearful testimony.
"Why is that?” Mr Tyler-Stott asked.
“I’m embarrassed and ashamed,” Gwynne responded.
Reading media reports covering his case, he felt disgusted and a "worthless human".
He said in prison he would become a target for attacks because of the nature of the offending plus his position with NSW Police.
Joining the force with an intention of joining Highway Patrol, Gwynne was investigated in 2019 and again in 2021 for breaching social media policy by posting Tinder profile pictures of himself in full police uniform.
Crown prosecutor David Jordan said the Liverpool man leveraged his status as police officer to create a "cloak of trust" behind which he and the people he communicated with could continue to talk.
“Daddy's not going to do anything to risk his job and go to jail, like share your pics. You are safe with daddy if you want to show your face,” Gwynne said in one message.
While the police officer never acted on his "fantasies," the conversations ran the risk of normalising the discussion of child abuse online, Mr Jordan said.
Gwynne's psychologist has diagnosed him with zoophilia, a sexual interest in animals, and autism but did not find that he had an interest in young children.
Mr Tyler-Stott said his client's autism had a connection with the offences.
The 30-year-old also had good prospects of rehabilitation, having promised that he would undergo whatever treatment programs were necessary, the barrister said.
Judge Tanya Smith will hand down her sentence on October 13.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
