Prominent Sydney plastic surgeon sentenced to six years' jail for engaging in child prostitution
Prominent Sydney plastic surgeon Richard Sackelariou has been sentenced to six years in jail, with a four-year non-parole period for engaging in child prostitution.
The District Court has heard Sackelariou lured six girls into hotel rooms for sex, grooming them with large sums of money.
In December last year, Sackelariou, aged 70, pleaded guilty to 10 charges involving girls in Sydney, Queensland and Newcastle in 2021 and 2022.
Agreed police facts tendered in Newcastle District Court showed Sackelariou met his first victim, a 15-year-old girl, at a hotel in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood.
The documents said he paid her $22,000 for sex between September 2021 and September 2022.
In September 2022, Sackelariou also made online contact with one of four girls from Newcastle.
Agreed facts tendered to the court stated that he met the then 14-year-old at an apartment in Sydney.
He paid her cash in a white envelope and said he would give her extra money for the morning-after pill.
That girl's friends learnt she had met up with the doctor for sex and contacted him separately, asking to meet in Newcastle.
The police facts said two hotel rooms were booked in Newcastle on October 7, 2022.
Several girls turned up, aged 13 to 15.
Police said he paid three Newcastle victims a total just shy of $4,000.
There was also a victim in Queensland, who he started communicating with in December 2021 when she was 14.
They met several times and, between their first online chat and October 2022, he paid her a total of $7,622.
Sackelariou told his sentencing hearing he was "ashamed" of the offences he had committed.
"I'm appalled," he said.
"I created such harm and such damage."
The court heard Sackelariou understood the psychological damage his victims had suffered, and said his actions also affected his now ex-wife and children.
"I've shamed them, embarrassed them. My sons don't wish to talk to me," he said.
"I betrayed my wife."
Due to time already served, Sackelariou will be eligible for parole in November 2026.
More to come.
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