‘Like a movie’: Couple’s twisted sex acts

A depraved couple have appeared in court ahead of learning their fate for luring a cognitively impaired child into their home and sexually abusing him for at least five years.

Julia Ann Bamforth, 49, and Paul Robert Bamforth, 50, pleaded guilty to 146 charges related to their horrific ongoing sexual abuse of a young boy on the NSW Central Coast.

The married couple admitted to luring the neurodivergent child into their home with free illicit drugs in order to sexually abuse him over a number of years.

They filmed themselves defiling the minor and rewatched it for their own sexual gratification, according to documents tendered to the court.

Clinical phycologist Christopher Lemming told the Downing Centre on Friday Paul disputed engaging in sexual acts with the child, despite accepting the police version of events.

Dr Lemming was questioned over a report he made on the 49-year-old in which he described Paul’s attempts to minimise his role, claiming instead to have wanted to please his wife.

“At the time I interviewed Paul, he was highly anxious and struggling to accept the behaviour, and the consequences that behaviour,” Dr Lemming said.

“He had very few external interests, including work. He did not have independence or autonomy, he was completely focused on his relationship.”

The court heard Paul actively directed his wife’s sexual acts with the child like a “movie director”, and was involved in categorising and compiling the videos.

It was also revealed that Paul had taken viagra after suffering a “reduced sex drive” at the time of the offences, and had on one occasion hit his wife while she was on the toilet.

Judge David Wilson agreed with submissions made by the Crown that the pair were “co-deviant”, and were mutually engaged in the vile years-long abuse.

“It seems to me they are influencing each other,” Justice Wilson said.

“No one played a more dominant role than the other.”

The pedophilic videos document the abuse from when the victim was 12 years old, but the child told police it began years earlier when he was only seven.

He told police he was given “free pot, free ice, free MDMA” to engage in sexual activities with the Bamforths.

“I didn’t want to but I had to,” the young boy told police.

When he attempted to tell friends about the abuse at 16 years old, the agreed facts show the victim was brought to the Bamforths house and savagely beaten.

The court documents reveal the couple knew the victim had been diagnosed with autism and ADHD and cruelly referred to him as “the retard”.

Police detailed numerous texts between Julia and Paul in which they discuss the sexual gratification they receive from sexually abusing the pre-pubescent victim.

The couple discussed their desire to have sex with children in hundreds of other communications discovered on their phones, including a fantasy of adopting children or having their own for the purposes of sexual abuse.

The sickening sexual abuse was unveiled when police raided the Bamforths’ Narara home in February 26, 2021.

Seven hard drives containing approximately 90 videos of the couple engaged in sexual acts with the victim when he was between 10 and 13 years old.

Julia pleaded guilty to 78 offences related to the vile ongoing child sex abuse, while Paul admitted to 68 charges.

Both were charged with more than 20 counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a child, as well as numerous charges of aggravated sexual assault of a victim with cognitive impairment.

The pair will reappear before Gosford Local Court on July 21.