A Sydney bartender who took photos from a string of women’s private social media accounts and shared them on a pornography website has been jailed for nine years.
Andrew Thomas Hayler, 38, posted photos of close friends, colleagues and housemates and encouraged people to share fantasies about the victims alongside his own desires to sexually assault the women.
Victims revealed the unnerving and disturbing impact of being told their images had been shared in that way, with many fearing for their safety after learning of the sickening threats on the forum.
Hayler also superimposed the faces of his victims onto sexually explicit images and posted them on the same site.
He pleaded guilty to 28 counts of using a carriage service to menace, harass and offend, telling a court his offending was an “outlet for a part of his psyche he didn’t want”.
Along with posting the images, Hayler also made comments such as “she is a future rape victim”, “I am closing in on this sl–“, “I now know where she lives” and “let’s claim her as ours”.
The website had more than 300,000 followers.
The offending occurred between 2020 and 2022 and featured 26 victims, only two of whom he did not know.
During an earlier hearing, Hayler said he published the names of the women as he found it empowering, but he also thought his offending resembled “a tree falling in the forest”.
Judge Jane Culver on Friday dismissed any notion Hayler had not caused a huge degree of hurt through his actions.
“The widespread degradation of females could not have been lost on the offender,” she told Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court during his sentencing.
“To post articles of that nature is to unleash the potential for such widespread and ongoing harm to a very large part of our community.”
One victim said it was “unnerving to realise so many people saw me in these humiliating positions… I feel sick” and feared for her safety as Hayler had revealed her identity online.
Another said she was in a state of shock when she learned Hayler had bragged about knowing her home address.
“The common theme is they have lost a sense of security, privacy, memories once recorded in images with happy contexts, and most of all a sense of themselves and their former lives,” Culver said.
“That is a profound harm.”
The court heard Hayler was offending right up until his arrest in August 2022.
He immediately co-operated with police, providing passwords so they could search his devices.
Culver jailed Hayler for nine years, with a non-parole period of five and a half years.