‘Parent’s worst nightmare’: Brett Callaghan jailed over rape of girl, 12

A man who lured a 12-year-old girl into his car, gave her an ice pipe to smoke and then repeatedly sexually assaulted her will spend at least nine years behind bars.

District Court Judge Robert Sutherland described the girl’s 9.5 hour ordeal as “undoubtedly a parent’s worst nightmare” as he sentenced Brett Callaghan, 39, to prison on Friday afternoon.

The girl was waiting for a friend in Thornleigh about 3.30pm on April 28, 2020, when Callaghan approached and convinced her into his car with the promise of a charger for her phone, which had run out of battery.

She would not be discovered by police until the early hours of the morning, hiding under a blanket at Callaghan’s Dural granny flat after spending several terrifying hours in his grasp.

“I didn’t know she was 13. She looks 19, easy,” Callaghan told police just before he was arrested.

The girl’s mother told the court in August her daughter had fundamentally changed since she was assaulted, her once “happy, free-spirited child” now serious and afraid.

“Although she has good days here and there, the impact has been catastrophic,” the woman said.

Callaghan claimed in a letter to the judge his life took a downward spiral when his teenage dreams of becoming an Olympic swimmer were dashed with a failed drug test.

“I was competing at high levels of national swimming,” the father and former landscaper wrote, explaining he had been set to trial for the Commonwealth Games before testing positive to cannabis and being booted from the team.

“There was pressure to perform … I have gone from an elite athlete to someone with no direction or career prospects,” he wrote.

The girl told Callaghan she was 12 before getting into his car at Thornleigh, Judge Sutherland said.

He then drove her to his parents’ home in Dural, where he lived in the granny flat, and got out a glass pipe and small bag of meth, describing it as “the good stuff” and telling the girl how to smoke it.

She took two puffs, Judge Sutherland said, and began to feel “tired, uneasy and hot but also cold”.

The court heard she attempted to escape from Callaghan a number of times, including when she “ran down the driveway screaming” and encountered a neighbour before Callaghan picked her up, and another when Callaghan drove her away from the house towards Berowra and pulled over for about half an hour.

When she got back to the car after the second escape attempt and begged Callaghan to drive her home, he forced her to perform oral sex on him, the court heard.

Meanwhile, her mother raised the alarm with police when the girl did not meet her at Hornsby train station at 4.30pm as arranged.

Police used CCTV footage to get Callaghan’s number plate and arrived at the Dural home while he and the girl were out, the court heard.

When Callaghan returned, he saw the police car and parked some distance away until the officers left.

He then took the girl back to the granny flat and raped her. She told police it “hurt a lot” and she was “in so much pain she wanted to cry”.

His parents then alerted police that their son had returned home and officers came back to the granny flat.

Callaghan ordered the girl to hide under a blanket and told police “I don’t know what you’re on about” before admitting she was there, claiming he did not know her age and hadn’t hurt her.

He was then arrested. The girl, shaking, crying and struggling to breathe, was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital.

Callaghan pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a child and supplying a prohibited drug to a child.

Further offences, including another count of aggravated sexual intercourse and two counts of sexual touching, were taken into account on his sentence.

The court heard a psychiatrist found Callaghan possibly had mild depression and was dealing with ADHD symptoms at the time of the crime.

But Judge Sutherland said he could not find those conditions were linked to the offending.

Callaghan was sentenced to 12 years prison with a non parole period of nine years.

He will be eligible for parole on April 28, 2029.