Stephen Porter jailed for child sex crimes after asking for bail to be revoked

Stephen James Porter, 51, was taken into custody at his own request in the ACT Supreme Court on Monday afternoon.

The disgraced Australian rules mentor pleaded guilty earlier this year to four charges laid over offences he committed between 2009 and 2020.

The Macgregor man's offending began when he used a boy he coached at the Magpies club in Belconnen for the production of child exploitation material over a period of nearly three years.

He later engaged in sexual acts with a young Ainslie Football Club player between 2015 and 2018, having struck up a private coaching arrangement with that boy's parents.

When this boy reported Porter to police in June last year, investigators discovered the offender was in the process of grooming yet another boy he was coaching at the Ainslie club.

A search of Porter's home also uncovered more than 1500 videos and images depicting the sexual exploitation of children.

The 51-year-old's case has recently been the subject of a disputed facts hearing, which is designed to resolve contention about the details of Porter's second - and most serious - crime.

While the matter had not been due back in court until February next year, Porter's solicitor, Adrian McKenna, filed an application last week seeking that his client's bail be revoked.

"He's seeking to end his own bail to begin the clock, as it were, on what he accepts will be an inevitable sentence of imprisonment," Mr McKenna told Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson late on Monday.

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Justice Loukas-Karlsson agreed about the inevitability of a full-time jail term, saying that revoking Porter's bail was the "right, correct and proper" thing to do.

The application was dealt with so quickly prison guards had not yet arrived to take Porter away when the revocation order was made, leaving him to stand in the body of the court and wait until they turned up.

Porter, a former ACT government IT worker who coached on a volunteer basis, is due back in court for a ruling in the disputed facts hearing on February 14.

He will be sentenced following the completion of that process.

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