Ryan Pendleton: Indefinite jail for serial pedophile who terrorised guards and inmates, mocked treatment

A serial child sex offender is being detained indefinitely after a WA judge found he mocked treatment programs, attacked prison guards, bullied vulnerable inmates and allegedly indecently assaulted his cellmate. Ryan Anthony Pendleton — whose father and brother have also been jailed for child sex crimes — abused children aged as young as 18 months in 2007 and 2008 when he was in his early 20s. He took videos and photos “of every instance”, and they were among the more than 59,000 files of vile material found in his possession. After being released from a near decade-long term of imprisonment in 2018, he did it again, sexually offending against a girl when she was aged four and five, and again accessing CEM. Pendleton did it when she was awake and asleep, taking photographs and wearing an adult nappy at times. He was subject to a post-sentence supervision order but had been able to commit the further crimes by either avoiding or misleading authorities, the sentencing judge for his second jail term found. Now aged 39, he has been deemed a high-risk serious offender by Supreme Court Judge Amanda Forrester, who last week imposed a continuing detention order on Pendleton to protect the community from him. The judge said she was unable to accept he had made genuine improvements through treatment in prison, finding he “says what he believes is necessary in order to facilitate the best outcome for him; in this case, release from custody”. “There is nothing which suggests he has made any progress,” Judge Forrester said. “He was dismissive regarding the program, and described its contents as tending to focus on ‘motivation to change crap’.” His behaviour during his second prison term had been “extremely poor”, she said, including violence towards prison officers. “He has boasted of being able to access drugs at will in prison,” the judge said. “He has refused to comply with lawful orders, bullied other vulnerable prisoners, and allegedly indecently assaulted another prisoner.” He is the son of Mark Pendleton, a former pre-primary schoolteacher who was handed a 16-year jail sentence for sexual offences against 11 girls between 1995 and 2000. Younger brother Callan Pendleton, 37, was last month jailed for the second time on child sex offences, handed a two year and eight-month term. His first stint - at the same prison as his father and sibling - lasted 16 months. “Their notoriety is something that you have had to deal with throughout your life,” Judge Craig Astill said, noting reports Callan Pendleton had engaged with treatment programs.