James Robert Sbresni: Snapchat rapist was facing child sex charge in Victoria and lied on GTG to enter WA

The Snapchat rapist who attacked a 14-year-old Geraldton girl over two hellish days last year was on bail for child sex offences in Victoria when he slipped into a locked-down WA after lying on his G2G pass. The West Australian has revealed James Robert Sbresni, 21, was charged with grooming a child under 16 for a sexual offence, along with four other lesser charges, in July 2020 in Ballarat, Victoria. The man, who was from the Melbourne suburb of Preston, was on bail for these offences when he flew to WA in May 2021 and lied on his G2G pass, saying that he was a returning resident. He also listed his destination as his victim’s former family home in Geraldton. He had been grooming the girl for months over social media. Once out of quarantine, Sbresni took the bus to Geraldton and, armed with a knife, committed the shocking rapes in bushland and at the derelict Batavia Motor Inne in Geraldton’s CBD. He claimed on his G2G pass he had been living in Victoria for five to six years and was moving to WA where his family lives. However, Sbresni did not have family in WA according to his mother Helen Anderson, who gave evidence at his District Court trial last week via video link from Victoria. Detective Senior Constable Gareth Lewis, who led the investigation, said after Sbresni’s arrest that he conducted inquiries about how he came to be in WA, including with police manning the airport. The details of such were not revealed in court. When asked about Sbresni’s apparent ease to gain a G2G pass despite facing outstanding charges, a WA Police spokesman said police were unable to comment because “this is a matter progressing in court”. Sbrensni appeared in Geraldton Magistrates Court on December 12 on a charge of providing false and misleading information, to which he has pleaded guilty, but it’s unclear whether it’s related to his G2G scam. The horrifying account of the teen victim’s two-day ordeal — during which she was raped at least four times — were revealed during a harrowing trial after which Sbresni was found guilty of two counts of rape on December 8. He had earlier pleaded guilty to two rape charges in Geraldton District Court. A jury acquitted him of three other counts of rape. The then 19-year-old had groomed the Geraldton girl, then 13, over Snapchat and Facebook Messenger for four months during which he sent a naked photo of himself to her. The pair had met through mutual friends which experts warn is a key strategy by sexual predators to befriend vulnerable children. The West Australian has obtained a number of graphic messages sent by Sbresni to his victim before they met for the first time on June 11 last year. The messages, many of which are too graphic to print, reveal the increasingly vile sexual content sent to the young girl . “I really want to hug you rn bubs,” the victim told Sbresni in April to which he replied “yeah, baby. Same, baby.” However, things soon progressed between the pair and the messages became more explicit, with Sbresni stating on May 28, while he was in quarantine, that “he had condoms”. During their messages, Sbresni referred to himself as “baby daddy” and his victim as “baby mama”. The court was told the victim’s older sister, who lives in Queensland, raised the alarm about the sexualised messages she saw on her sister’s Facebook account back in April. “This is what I’m seeing. I’m concerned, you know, what’s happening” she told the victim’s mother, who, unlike the sister, did not have access to her daughter’s messages. At one point, Sbresni even changed the surname on his Facebook account to that of his victim. However, despite the warnings, the victim lied to her mother telling her she was staying at a friend’s house on the weekend of horrors. For Sbresni, it was the culmination of a concerted and sick grooming operation. On day two of the trial, jurors heard the chilling pre-recorded evidence from the victim recounting the terrifying moment she was sexually assaulted in the Batavia Motor Inne. “I woke up with him touching me, I asked him what he was doing, and he ... asked if I wanted it or not. When I said ‘no’, he didn’t care. I didn’t scream as the knife was beside him, he eventually stopped,” she said. At one point the victim told Sbresni she wanted to go home. In his closing remarks, District Court Judge Alan Troy said while the victim “may have been interested in the fantasy of all this, she was not interested in the reality”. The 14-year-old girl’s nightmare came to an end around 9pm on June 12 last year, when she was rescued by Geraldton police from a second-floor room at the abandoned Batavia Motor Inne after her parents reported the matter to police. A phone call between Constable Katie Cameron and Sbresni, in which he denied seeing the victim and said he was in Melbourne, proved crucial to locating the pair. Officers were able to triangulate Sbresni’s phone using nearby Telstra telephone towers which placed him in the Geraldton CBD. From there, officers checked out the notorious Batavia Motor Inne, well-known to be a magnet for squatters and rough sleepers. Sbresni was remanded in custody to be sentenced on January 27.