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A Mullaloo mother will spend at least the next decade behind bars after she forced her three-year-old daughter to watch the woman have sex with her lover.
The mother, 35, last week pleaded guilty to 18 charges, including procuring a child to engage in sexual behaviour and indecent dealing with a child under 13 years.
Vile details of her offending were outlined during her sentencing in Perth District Court.
The court was told the mother-of-two, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her children, and her FIFO worker husband were “actively involved in the swinging community”, and both began an ongoing consensual relationship with another couple.
In April last year, the woman and the husband from the other couple began arranging a sexual encounter while the woman’s husband was away at work.
The court was told the man wanted to “involve” the woman’s three-year-old daughter, and filmed the entire incident on his mobile phone.
During a WhatsApp conversation, the woman’s co-offender said he wanted to “f—” the woman “next to” her daughter, and that the child could watch.
She responded by saying, “okay”, and then, “bad boy”.
During the incident, the child was initially fully clothed and watching a children’s movie while the couple engaged in sexual activity nearby.
However, the court was told the offending took a darker turn when the couple “encouraged [the child] to physically participate in the activity”.
“It is clear that the recordings only captured some of the offending,” Judge Mark Herron told the woman during her sentencing on Thursday.
“It is clear that this is not the only time you have engaged in sexual activity in the presence of your daughter.”
Police searched the woman’s co-offender’s Beechboro home in June last year, where they found the footage on his mobile phone.
The woman was arrested a day later and the WhatsApp messages between the pair were discovered on her phone.
Months later, the 35-year-old told a psychiatrist about the circumstances that led to her offending, including that she and her husband of 13 years were experiencing “sexual intimacy difficulties”.
It was her husband, she claimed, who pushed her to try swinging and that, after developing an interest in erotic novels, she agreed to give it a go.
They met the Beechboro couple in October 2024 and swapped sexual partners in an ongoing arrangement, with the court hearing that tensions started to rise between the group when the two couples began getting closer with their swapped partners.
The woman and the other couple’s husband then began an affair.
“You told [the psychiatrist] that you became increasingly infatuated with [the man] and the relationship with him became all consuming,” Herron said.
“You submitted to [his] increasingly extreme sexual desires.”
The man also had a three-year-old daughter, the court was told, and the woman claimed he started asking her to have sex with him in the presence of either his or her daughter.
She claimed he “began hounding” her to go to her house and involve her daughter in their sexual activity.
“Initially, you were reluctant but thought you had to agree to please him and thought that your daughter would just be in the room but would not be a participant,” Herron said.
“You did not believe [the man] meant any harm to your daughter because he had a daughter the same age and said he wanted to be a good father to her.
“You never considered [him] to be a paedophile.”
The mother told the psychiatrist that the man asked her what was “allowed” with her daughter, to which she responded that she would lead, but then claimed that during the incident he started to ask the little girl to do things, which she said she felt she had no control over.
“You felt confused about what was happening and regretted allowing it to go so far,” Herron said.
“You believed your daughter would have been too young to know what was happening or to remember, and you did not believe the acts would have harmed her.”
Herron rejected the psychiatrist’s opinion that the woman was manipulated and groomed by the man to gain access to her daughter.
He told the court that, upon reading the messages between the pair, he determined she was “an equal participant” in the offending.
“But I do accept it is unlikely you would have engaged in the sexual activity with [your daughter] without [the man,” Herron said.
“That in other words, but for [the man], you would not have engaged in the sexual activity. I also accept that you don’t have a sexual interest in your daughter.”
The woman’s husband wrote a victim impact statement stating that her offending had a “profound and ongoing impact” on the family.
“The emotional and psychological consequences for both children are significant and continuing,” Herron said, adding the little girl would likely suffer “lifelong consequences” from the offending.
“You have deprived her of a normal, happy childhood,” he said.
“Had the offending not been discovered, it is likely, in my view, it would have continued on other occasions until you formed the view there was too great a risk [the child] would start to remember and understand what was happening or talk to somebody else about what was happening.”
Herron said he needed to impose a sentence on the woman that would deter others from engaging in similar behaviour.
“I need to try and get the message out to people in the community who are sexually attracted to children of the consequences of offending, to try and deter them from becoming involved in similar offending, and particularly to try and send the message out to parents who might not necessarily be sexually attracted to their own children, but who are prepared to allow their children to be sexually abused by others,” he said.
The woman was sentenced to 12 years and nine months in prison, backdated to her arrest in July 2025. She must serve a non-parole period of 10 years before she can be considered for release.
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