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Home / World

Making of a monster: Behind Graham Loughlan Harrison's smile lurked a violent sexual predator who liked to hurt women

news.com.au
7 Dec, 2016 06:57 PM6 mins to read

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Nothing about Graham Harrison gives a clue to the monster within.

Nothing about Graham Harrison gives a clue to the monster within.

Graham Loughlan Harrison is polite, courteous, with a sense of humour and, from the outside, an average, seemingly likeable human being.

But it is the normal exterior of this sex monster and paedophile that poses the greatest danger to women.

The 46-year-old tall, good-looking, diagnosed "paraphiliac", or sexual sadist, uses it to lure his victims.

As Harrison awaits sentencing on 36 of his latest sex charges against women and underage girls, news.com.au has obtained court documents that reveal the violent childhood and sexualised upbringing of this dangerous predator.

In Year 9 he was removed from school for sending an obscene letter to a female student, and as a teen was made to watch his mother have sex with men.

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The Graham Loughlan Harrison files detail the alarming extent of the crimes committed by this softly spoken "smiling sadist".

Harrison drove a hitchhiker, 17, to a bush track near Tyalgum and said he'd mutilate her with his knife. Photo / Google Maps
Harrison drove a hitchhiker, 17, to a bush track near Tyalgum and said he'd mutilate her with his knife. Photo / Google Maps

He committed his most recent offences - telling victims "You have no idea what I'd do to have sex with little girls. That's my thing" - while wearing a satellite tracking anklet under strict community supervision.

Harrison's troubled history dates back to when he was 15 years old and the son of a Toowoomba prostitute.

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It includes the terrifying kidnap and rape of teenage girls he told he would kill or mutilate their genitals.

According to his file, forensic psychologists who have studied Harrison say his key motivation is a desire to hurt females.

Harrison has "recurrent and increasingly elaborate" plans for the "sadistic capture, control and infliction of pain and humiliation on females".

In one of the most horrifying cases on his file, Harrison picked up a 17-year-old hitchhiker "TJK" in northern NSW and promised to drop her at a friend's house in the tiny town of Tyalgum. Instead, Harrison produced a 15cm knife and handcuffs and drove to a lonely spot.

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He told TJK he would mutilate her so she couldn't have children, throw her over a cliff and bury her in a 1.5m grave he had dug.

He repeatedly made her perform sex acts as he ran the knife blade along her neck and scalp, cutting off strands of her hair.

Fresh psychiatric reports on Harrison are before NSW District Court Judge Jane Culver, who is sentencing the offender next year.

Hearing Harrison's lawyers argue for his supervised community release from prison, Judge Culver said the community had to be protected given his "flagrant" reoffending while under supervision.

Harrison has told psychiatrists about his childhood living with his mother, whom he described as a music teacher and sex worker.

Harrison grew up in Brisbane and Toowoomba, never knowing his father and without siblings.

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His violent mother, who told him "you made me barren" and that his twin had died at birth, allegedly hit him with electrical cords and once pointed a shotgun at him.

"He would regularly attend hotel rooms with his mother while she had sex with men," a report on his file said.

"His mother made a number of suicide attempts while he was in her care, screamed and yelled at him."

Harrison's mother brought men home to have sex "where he could observe them" and made him truant from school "to watch soap operas with her".

Harrison was removed from primary school for stealing, and then in Year 9 after sending an obscene letter to a girl.

In Year 10, he was suspended for having a "nude cocktails" recipe book, and he walked out of Year 12 exams after claiming a woman raped him.

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He began using cannabis at 15 and in 1988, aged 19, Harrison was handed his first sentence by a magistrate - 18 months' probation - for false pretences and stealing.

In 1991, he picked up two girls who were hitchhiking on the Pacific Highway at Coolangatta, Queensland.Harrison drove them to a secluded track at Wooyung, a beach town near Byron Bay in northern NSW, and put string around one girl's throat.

He asked the other girl if she would like to hurt the first, who escaped after stabbing him with a pen knife.

Harrison's next recorded offence was the rape and kidnap of the girl known as TJK at Tyalgum.

Sentenced to 16 years' prison, Harrison appealed and had his term reduced.

Released in December 2007, Harrison was considered so dangerous the NSW Supreme Court placed him on an extended supervision order (ESO) for up to five years and ordered
he wear a GPS tracking device.

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But under NSW Corrective Services supervision he raped two women, used an 8-year-old girl to produce child pornography, kept a large collection of shocking videos and images and illegally ran a brothel.

In prison files about Harrison, he continued to offend according to his "arousal to pain, suffering, humiliation, capture, asphyxia and control", but had changed his modus operandi.

Harrison rented a flat in Maroubra in Sydney's east, where he amassed a child porn collection featuring girls as young as 2 years old.

In late 2012, Harrison answered the Gumtree ad of a single mother of three seeking a loan.

The mother performed a sex act with Harrison in a Westfield carpark after he threatened her children and demanded the woman's 15-year-old daughter work for him as a sex worker.

Harrison, using the pseudonym "Anton Brooker", was operating the Paradise Thai Massage
brothel at Drummoyne in inner west Sydney.

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He secretly filmed the mother performing the sex act, and then threatened to put the video on Facebook if she didn't serve up her daughter for sex.

"It is really good to f*** mother and daughter, it's just awesome," he told the mother, according to the court facts on the case.

"And especially in that situation where, you know, Mum knows that her whole life will be destroyed, like entirely destroyed, they'll lose the house, lose custody of the daughter.

"The daughter knows that and she did what she could to help her mum."

At a meeting with the daughter at a restaurant in Parramatta, Harrison listed the ways of being a successful child prostitute and continued to email the mother.

He was arrested three months later.

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Meanwhile, Harrison had taken a woman out for a dinner date, but instead driven to his Maroubra flat where he tied her up, filmed her, sexually assaulted her and made veiled threats against her 9-year-old daughter.

Police facts about the terrifying ordeal state that Harrison also said to the woman, "If I have to kill a girl, will you keep your mouth shut about that if I have to kill her?"

Judge Culver will sentence Harrison in the NSW District Court in February.

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