Notorious paedophile Bradley Pen Dragon, 63, will once again be released back into the community after a Perth magistrate deemed his latest breach of a post sentence supervision order a technicality.
Dragon appeared at Perth Magistrates Court on Monday via video link from Hakea Prison where he has spent nearly four weeks locked up again after police found copies of a DVD depicting partially clothed children.
Bradley Pen Dragon on his release from a Thai jail in 2006. Credit: The Associated Press
Dragon was released back into the community in June 2023 after serving half his life behind bars, including 13 years in a Thai prison for raping young girls in the 1990s.
The 62-year-old believes his interest in children is “natural”, although the court heard on Monday Dragon has participated in some rehabilitation as part of his release order.
His release, however, means he has to adhere to a long list of strict conditions, one of which is that he is not to collect or access images of children. But on October 26 this year, during a compliance search at Pen Dragon’s home, police found the DVD Mad Max Thunderdome, which depicts partially clothed children on the cover. While Dragon was given permission to have the DVD, it was an A4 photocopy he made of the cover that lead to him breaching his order and landed him back behind bars.
On Monday, while pleading guilty to the breach, the court was told Dragon made the copy “to use in a collage or poster” but his lawyer said his client had merely “acted foolishly”.
“It is submitted that this is at the lower end and could be categorised as a technical breach,” he told the court.
“Mr Dragon has received permission to have a copy of that DVD, he has then wanted to make a copy of the cover and enlarged it for the purposes of his own art work. He coloured it in – to not contravene the order.”
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