Child sex offender Karl Salmon faces an indefinite prison term after targeting young girls not long after he was released from prison. Photo / 123rf
Child sex offender Karl Salmon faces an indefinite prison term after targeting young girls not long after he was released from prison. Photo / 123rf
WARNING: This story discusses sexual offending against young people.
Child predator Karl Salmon had been out of jail for a matter of months when he began messaging a 13-year-old girl on social media and later met up with her to have sex.
He then went on to amass acatalogue of sexually explicit images of underage girls whom he had tricked into sending him photos of themselves by pretending to be a teenage boy.
That prison sentence also covered Salmon’s years of grooming young girls on the internet.
A summary of facts provided to NZME described a “modus operandi” of his previous offending where he would obtain intimate images and videos of the girls and then use them to continue sexualised conversations.
After being released from prison in January 2021, Salmon’s name was on the child sex offender register, and he was required to report any technology in his possession and the name of his internet provider.
However, in October 2022, he was involved in a pursuit after police stopped him to search his vehicle.
Karl Salmon will be sentenced in the Palmerston North District Court. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
He became argumentative and tried to flee, reaching speeds of 117km/h in a 50km/h area.
Police abandoned the pursuit but later located and arrested him.
Salmon’s home was subsequently searched and a laptop and a smartphone were found, as well as evidence he had used the devices to connect to social media.
An analysis of the phone showed he had been messaging a 13-year-old girl, and she had sent him multiple sexually explicit images of herself.
Salmon had met up with the girl in October 2021 in Pahiatua, where he drove her to a secluded location and had sex with her.
There, he took photos of them together on his phone.
The pair had sex again several months later.
Following his arrest in October 2022, Salmon, now 30, called the teen from Whanganui Prison.
He asked her not to disclose the extent of their relationship to the police, and to tell them she was 23.
In January 2023, Salmon was released from prison custody on bail and, within days, had set up two Instagram accounts using fake personas and attempted to contact the teen, but she blocked him.
Police searched Salmon’s bail address in March 2023 and found the mobile phone that he had used to make the Instagram accounts, as well as Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok and Discord accounts. He purported to be a teenage boy on the accounts.
Using Snapchat, Salmon obtained sexually explicit photographs of 10 girls aged between 9 and 15 years old.
He had also used the app’s GPS location feature to record the home addresses of some of his victims.
In total, the police found 34 videos and 76 photographs exhibiting child exploitation material of the 10 girls.
Salmon was scheduled to go to trial next week in the Palmerston North District Court but, this week, he pleaded guilty to 13 charges, including unlawful sexual connection with a young person, failing to abide with his reporting obligations as a registered child sex offender, attempting to pervert the course of justice, possession of objectionable publications and indecent communication with a young person.
He also admitted breaching an Extended Supervision Order which came into effect when he was released from prison, preventing him from contacting anyone under the age of 16, and from possessing an internet-capable device.
Salmon would be sentenced later this year, at which the Crown would seek preventive detention.
Such a sentence is an indefinite term of imprisonment where prisoners may be released on parole but remain managed by Corrections for the rest of their lives and can be recalled to prison at any time.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
