analysis
Bradley Pen Dragon: The ugly story behind one of Australia’s most depraved, notorious paedophiles

The first mention of Bradley Pen Dragon in this paper’s archives is in 1994. His name was included in a 173-word brief, from the “Asia desk” and printed in the Kalgoorlie Miner, as the second of two Australian men charged with serious crimes in Bangkok. The first man, 29-year-old Richard David Walker, was facing charges over the accidental death of a Thai bar worker during a scuffle at a waterfall. “Meanwhile, a 33-year-old Brisbane man, Bradley Pen Dragon, caught with pornographic photos last November and facing sacrilege charges, appeared last week before the Chiang Mai court,” the brief detailed. “He pleaded not guilty to sacrilege and possession of pornography for sale, but guilty of being in possession of a knife. Hearings are continuing.” Despite this being the first mention of Pen Dragon here in WA, it is understood his criminal history actually stretches as far back as 1982. Fast forward to this week and Pen Dragon, now 62, is one of WA’s most notorious paedophiles, this weekend back behind bars once again after breaking one of the 62 strict conditions under which he had been released from Acacia Prison following his most recent crime. ‘Boyish, almost winsome looks’ Born in NSW in March 1960, Bradley Pen Dragon left school in Year 10 and spent time living in Queensland before heading to Thailand for a holiday in 1993. When he arrived in the country, Pen Dragon was described as looking “like any other budget traveller”. Clean shaven with his flame-red locks cut short, he had “boyish, almost winsome, looks drive home the fact that paedophiles do not look nasty or creepy”, Asia desk reporter Marissa Williams wrote of the young Brisbane engineer. But archives would later hand Pen Dragon the dubious honour of being the first foreigner jailed for child sex offences in the country and by 1995, he was languishing behind bars, having been handed a 15-year sentence for the sexual abuse of minors. He’d already previously been sentenced to two years jail for desecrating the Buddhist religion and six months for the possession of pornography, as well as being fined for carrying a knife, on December 30, 1994. A long investigation Writing just a year after his 2015 sentencing, Williams reported that Pen Dragon, then aged 33, had been arrested a month after his arrival in Thailand when police uncovered a sickening trail of child sex and pornography following a tip-off by a local film processing shop. Evidence revealed he had forced two Thai girls, aged 8 and 12, to perform sexual acts on each other after which he beat and abused them sexually. Photographs and a video made by Pen Dragon showed tears streaming down the girls’ faces. He also had about 400 pornographic photographs, including one of an eight-year-old Thai girl with a Buddha image in her vagina. Thai and Australian police then spent 14 months following the trail to northern Thailand, eventually charging Pen Dragon with raping two hill-tribe girls. Various reports say that one of his victims was a young mentally disabled girl. During his earlier trial on charges of sacrilege, pornography and carrying a weapon, he repeatedly referred to the children as prostitutes bought from Thai people who were the real law-breakers. It would later be reported that the grandmother and mother of two sisters, aged eight and 12, were to serve 50-year jail terms for selling the children into prostitution and the pimp who procured the girls for Pen Dragon jailed for 14 years. A judge presiding over his case said Pen Dragon had shown no remorse for his actions and a media report quoted him as telling visitors in a Chiang Mai prison that he was incarcerated because he “photographed prostitutes that Thailand provided for people”. “It is impossible to know how many children Pen Dragon assaulted but his collection of knives, handcuffs and camera equipment offer a frightening guess,” Williams wrote in 1996. “It would be comforting to believe Pen Dragon was a deviant loner, one of a small group of men who enjoy sex with children. “The reality is that he is one of many men who travel overseas in search of children to gratify their desires.” Little could the reporter have known then that Pen Dragon, however, was in a class entirely of his own. Royal pardon With long, frizzy strawberry blonde hair, and a straggly beard, a very different looking Pen Dragon emerged from Klong Prem Prison in 2006. He was one of 25,000 prisoners Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej pardoned to mark his 60 years on the throne that year. The feat had made him, at that time, the world’s longest reigning monarch. But activists had warned many of those to be released under royal pardon, including Pen Dragon and other convicted paedophiles, still posed a danger if they were released into the community without adequate supervision. Cameras swarmed as he emerged after 13 years behind bars, with one reporter asking him “How do you feel now, what do you see in the future?” “Prison,” was the answer. As he climbed into a police van taking him to a detention centre pending deportation to Australia, the reporter continued: “Do you think you deserved a royal pardon?” Pen Dragon replied: “I didn’t get a royal pardon as such. When the judge gave the sentence he assumed I’d receive a pardon much earlier than that so the time I served was much longer than the judge actually intended.” He was expelled from Thailand without getting any psychological treatment in jail. “All I want a chance is just to live a quiet life,” he told ABC radio at the time. “I’ll live it as far away from anybody and everything as I can.” His quiet life didn’t last long. Back to Australia and back to jail After being deported to Australia, Pen Dragon moved to Sydney but was soon hounded out of town. He did well working on an isolated WA property 300km from Newman, but was forced to move to Perth for health reasons and struggled in suburbia. Fast forward two years to 2008 and Pen Dragon was once again featured in the pages of this newspaper, this time walking free from a WA court despite continued offending, once again involving child abuse material. He had been arrested in May 2007 when he claimed possession of a computer thumb drive he had lost in a local cinema. He pleaded guilty to possessing child abuse material because the thumb drive contained more than 800 images which included penetration of children and bestiality, according to the report by The West’s Roy Gibson and Christiana Jones. But he wasn’t remanded, rather given a suspended sentence after a judge decided it was better for the by-now 47-year-old to take part in a sex offenders’ treatment program on the outside because he had not received treatment in that Thai jail. By the time of the sentencing Pen Dragon, had once again spent seven months in jail, this time on remand while Chief District Court Judge Antoinette Kennedy waited for background reports. She complained that the pre-sentence report took 13 weeks and the psychological report 22 weeks. “He has been on remand since June last year,” Judge Kennedy reportedly said at the 2008 hearing. “They will not put anyone on a treatment program while on remand. That has nothing to do with the accused and nothing to do with the courts. This man could have gone into a program on June 7.” Gibson and Jones reported that the judge had said the appropriate sentence for Pen Dragon’s offences in Perth was 12 months jail so, with parole, he should have been released a month earlier. Even if she refused him parole and he spent another five months in jail, he would hardly have time to get into the program. “Part of the system in Australia is that we endeavour to rehabilitate people — not lock them up and forget about them,” the judge said at the time. “It can never be the case that a person is kept in prison in a free and democratic society simply because the authorities have failed to provide reports which have delayed the sentencing and delayed you going into a prison rehabilitation program.” Judge Kennedy released Pen Dragon on a 12-month suspended sentence on condition that he took part in a sex offenders’ program. Leaving the court, Pen Dragon said: “I’m so sorry — it will not happen again.” But shadow justice minister at the time, Rob Johnson, said Pen Dragon obviously had not learnt his lesson. “You will never rehabilitate a habitual sex offender,” Mr Johnson said. Here we go again Just three weeks later he was caught using a computer at an internet cafe in Perth to browse pornographic websites. After pleading guilty to the charge, he was sentenced by District Court Judge Michael Bowden to three months jail on May 27, also triggering his earlier suspended jail sentence, according to West reporter Philippa Perry, writing in November of 2008. But he wasn’t behind bars for long. “The Court of Appeal overturned Chief Judge Kennedy’s sentence, imposing a term of six months immediate imprisonment, which allowed for the seven months he had spent in custody awaiting sentence” Perry wrote. “The court also overturned his three-month jail term imposed in May and instead ordered he pay a fine of $1200.” The six-month jail term was backdated and he walked free in the November. Third time unlucky Now described in media reports as “notorious”, it took just eight months for Pen Dragon to land himself his next set of charges. After a four-month investigation, the WA Police sex offender management squad and the Australian Federal Police child protection unit on July 28, 2009 charged Pen Dragon, by now 49, with five counts of possession of what was then termed child pornography after finding photographs and video files on electronic storage devices they had seized earlier in the year. Police had raided his home in the May and allegedly seized three electronic storage devices. A month later, police said they had seized two more devices. He was eventually sentenced to 34 months jail after pleading guilty to eight counts of possessing child pornography. Sentencing him in 2010, District Court Judge Simon Stone said Pen Dragon’s criminal history indicated he was at high risk of reoffending and previous punishments had not deterred him from offending. Judge Stone said Mr Pen Dragon had an “anti-authoritarian and antisocial” personality. It was also revealed that he had no family support and struggled to find accommodation and work because of his high profile as a sex offender. “You fail to appreciate the gravity and implications of the child victims of your offending conduct,” Judge Stone said, describing some images, which included men raping girls, as being at the “higher end of the scale of seriousness”. Pen Dragon would go on to be released from jail in late May 2012. Same old story, same old place Perth city detectives arrested Pen Dragon on a Friday night in July 2012 at the same Barrack Street internet cafe where he was caught browsing child pornography websites in 2008. This time, he had allegedly spent up to 10 hours looking at images of children online, only being interrupted by a fight between him and truck mechanic Andrew Smart breaking out over what Pen Dragon was viewing on the screen. The altercation was recorded on a mobile phone with the footage appearing to show Pen Dragon trying to stab Mr Smart with a knife as they wrestled. Speaking to West reporter Gabrielle Knowles after the incident, Mr Smart, who she reported knew Pen Dragon after briefly sharing a house with him in Yanchep, admitted “it could have all gone very badly”. “He got upset because I was telling everyone who he was and he was looking at things he shouldn’t be looking at,” Mr Smart claimed. “I had my hands around his hand which had the knife and I lost my balance wrestling with him.” Pen Dragon took out an interim violence restraining order against Mr Smart, who said he had kicked the offender out of the share-house about two weeks before the knife fight. Mr Smart claimed suspicions the man he met as “Brad” was a notorious paedophile were confirmed when police visited to warn Pen Dragon of potential vigilante attacks after someone posted the house address on the internet. A violent escalation By August the same year, Pen Dragon was back in the news again after he ambushed a mother at her car in Mt Lawley, leaping across her sick baby to threaten her with a knife. The woman managed to wrest the blade from her attacker and Pen Dragon was arrested nearby. He would later plead guilty to aggravated armed assault with intent to rob and be jailed for another five years. The victim, who gave her name only as “Shannon”, said the ordeal was like a “scene out of a movie” and that the incident turned her life upside down. Describing the events of that night, the 38-year-old said she had put her sick 11-month-old daughter into her car seat after a visit to Mercy Hospital, when Pen Dragon, wielding a big kitchen knife, climbed into the back and put his arm across her throat. She said she screamed and wrestled with Pen Dragon over the knife, cutting her fingers badly but getting the weapon. Outside court, following his sentencing, Shannon said Pen Dragon was a “frightening man” and that she fought back out of “reflex” but would always wonder what his real intentions were. It is notable that Pen Dragon’s lawyer Michael Tudori did not apply for bail when he first appeared in court over the charges, with some at that time believing he was finding it too difficult on the outside and life was easier behind bars. Mr Tudori had told a court his client had called him to say he wanted to go back to prison just weeks before he was arrested browsing pornographic websites at the internet cafe. In 2012, the media reported a little more extensively on Pen Dragon’s personal life, saying his parents were dead and his brothers had washed their hands of him. It was added that a police prosecutor once described him as a “sick puppy”. But that Pen Dragon did not see it that way, rather arguing that society is repressive about sex with children and he was being victimised for his beliefs. And even while in jail, it appears Pen Dragon continued to harbour fantasies over children. Cherie McFadden, a former security officer at Acacia Prison, contacted The West Australian in October 2012, saying she had been involved in a search of Pen Dragon’s cell the year before where he was caught with pictures of children. Ms McFadden said the images of “little girls” appeared to have been taken from a magazine. She completed an incident report on the instructions of her shift manager. Never-ending story This time it took just a fortnight for Pen Dragon to land himself in trouble after being released from prison. In a break from tradition, however, it was a William Street backpackers where he was spotted downloading child exploitation material in August 2017. He was arrested and charged, and once again made no application for bail, later being handed yet more jail time. When the moment once again came for Pen Dragon to be released, in December last year, this time WA’s top judge Chief Justice Peter Quinlan got involved, keeping him behind bars until the Supreme Court considered whether he should be declared a high-risk serious offender. He was kept in custody on an interim detention order under the High Risk Serious Offenders Act until Justice Larissa Strk ruled on his future early last month. She did indeed rule Pen Dragon to be a high-risk serious offender and placed on a 10-year supervision order with 62 conditions to protect the community against the “unacceptable risk” that he would commit more crimes. “Having weighed all the evidence, I am satisfied that the risk that is presented by releasing the respondent on a supervision order can be reduced or guarded against to a level that is reasonably acceptable and will ensure the adequate protection of the community,” Justice Strk said. Experts said Pen Dragon had “unmet treatment needs” and Justice Strk found there were “more resources available” to meet those needs under supervision in the community. It came amid further revelations that he has a “belief that sexual contact with children is a positive experience for the child and sexual contact with children is a natural behaviour”. Pen Dragon finally stepped foot out of Acacia Prison on Tuesday. Commentators across the board raised concerns about his ability to survive outside of jail without further re-offending. It may come as no surprise that he broke his own record, landing himself behind bars again within 48 hours allegedly having being found with pictures of children, contrary to his strict release conditions. According to his now-familiar pattern, when appearing in court on Friday, Pen Dragon did not apply for bail.

analysisBradley Pen Dragon: The ugly story behind one of Australia’s most depraved, notorious paedophiles

analysis
Bradley Pen Dragon: The ugly story behind one of Australia’s most depraved, notorious paedophiles