A judge has slammed the ‘abhorrent male bravado’ of two footballers as he jailed them for sex crimes against a 14-year-old girl.
Queenslander Jaiden Fidge, 24, and his friend Riley Smith, 26, from NSW, pleaded guilty to sexual penetration of a child aged under 16 – Fidge to one count and Smith to two – after preying on the girl at a birthday party in 2024.
In Victoria’s County Court on Thursday, Fidge was jailed for a minimum of three years and Smith received a minimum of three years and 10 months.
The men, both regional football players who met online as part of an AFL memes group, appeared via video link from prison.
Judge Gerard Mullaly labelled their offending as ‘disgusting’ and ‘degrading’, as the men were much older and knew their victim was only 14.
‘You knew the victim’s age, but you went ahead anyway,’ he told the pair.
Queensland footballer Jaiden Fidge. 24, was jailed for up to four years and nine months
New South Wales footballer Riley Smith was sentenced to a five-year and 11-month sentence
‘The first joint penetration had an element of an abhorrent male bravado, where you gave preference to having a joint sexual conquest over the dignity of the victim.’
He also noted their sense of welfare for the victim was ‘simply drowned out by your perverted sexual gratification’.
The men met the girl at the party on Victoria’s Surf Coast.
Fidge asked her age and she told him she was 14, and Smith then asked the same and told her he was aged 17, when he was actually 24 at the time.
Later that evening, Fidge, then aged 22, lured the girl away from the party to the backyard and began kissing her.
Smith came from behind and pulled down the girl’s pants and underwear.
The girl turned on her phone light, but the two men told her to turn it off, and when she asked what was going on they said ‘you need to pee’.
The two men jointly penetrated the girl, who could not speak or ask for help, before returning to the party.
The two footballers pleaded guilty to sexual penetration of a child aged under 16 at Geelong Law Courts
The girl went to bed and Fidge and Smith boasted to other men at the party that they had ‘put the victim on the spit’, Judge Mullaly said.
The judge said he thought carefully about whether he would repeat ‘the disgusting words you triumphantly used to describe what you had done’.
‘They are degrading to the victim,’ he said.
‘But I have decided to use the abhorrent words you used because they graphically give insight into your depraved thinking about the victim, and indeed how you see and give little value to the dignity and autonomy of women.
‘These were words that described the victim as an object, with little other value than to be used for the joint, depraved sexual gratification.’
After the victim went to bed, Smith contacted her on Snapchat and asked her to meet him outside alone, where he again pulled her pants down and penetrated her.
The men were told to leave the party after word spread about their actions. Both were interviewed by police and initially denied any sexual activity with the girl.
After being presented with ‘overwhelming’ DNA evidence, Fidge and Smith admitted their crimes, the judge said.
Fidge was jailed for up to four years and nine months and Smith was handed a five-year and 11-month sentence.
The standard sentence for the offence is six years in prison, but positive character references provided to the court, their early guilty pleas and remorse were taken into account.
Both men will be registered as sex offenders for 15 years.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
Lifeline 13 11 14
Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25)
