Amanda* was home alone the first time one of the men came knocking.
The stranger had been sent to her home dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase. When she answered his knock at the door, he looked her up and down in a sexual manner and then left.
It was the second time a man she’d never met had come to her house, the string of strange incidents beginning with text messages from an adult industry worker inviting her to participate in a job interview.
Jane* was alone at work when an unknown man entered, grabbed her and forcefully kissed her.
Lisa* was also working when a man, purporting to be a tradie, arrived trying to engage in conversation and growing increasingly flirtatious before she refused his advances and he left.
Weeks later, she started receiving sexually explicit texts and voicemail messages.
Kate* was so worried by the stream of men arriving at her home uninvited, she stood on her balcony and dumped a bucket of water on a man who rang her doorbell at 1am.
What the women all had in common was that they had unknowingly become victims of a sadistic puppeteer who was using their images to lure men to their homes and workplaces, believing they were welcome guests invited to act out sexual role plays.
The behaviour was so disturbing, some of the victims feared they would be raped; others sold their homes and moved to avoid encountering any other strangers on their doorstep.
The County Court heard the man behind it all, convicted sex offender Jonathan Kiddle, had made thousands of AI doctored images of his victims and distributed them to hundreds of strangers.
All up, there were more than a dozen victims, the eldest aged 60. Kiddle had met one on a Facebook page about hiking, others he came across through his work as a business executive, another he met at a bar.
Sex offender Jonathan Kiddle.
This month, some of them sat shoulder to shoulder in court to face the man who had stalked them, created fake sexualised videos and pictures with their images, and sent strangers knocking on their doors for sex.
Kiddle, 52, pleaded guilty to 32 charges including stalking, incitement to rape, and possessing the illicit drug, LSD.
The court heard police had uncovered more than 440,000 sexually explicit AI-generated images of Kiddle’s victims on seized electronic devices.
Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers said that as Kiddle’s offending grew more brazen, he had sent an Uber to collect a man and take him to a victim’s home.
“Can I f— her?” the man asked.
“If you want to, yeah,” Kiddle replied, pretending to be the woman’s husband.
Rogers said: “It’s clear none of the women were consenting.”
Kiddle told police he would encourage men to attend the women’s homes, making up to 100 attempts to get them to engage in sexual activity.
In Amanda’s case, he faked images of her 61 times to 20 different people. In Jane’s case, it was 111 pictures to 30 different people over SMS. Another victim had images sent 800 times to 200 different people.
One victim told the court she now lived in fear that someone would try to get into her house or be waiting and watching her leave work.
“This crime has changed the way I interact with the world. I struggle to trust anyone. What used to be simple and natural … now feels risky and uncomfortable,” she said.
Another said Kiddle had stolen her sense of safety and joy in the world.
“I now live scanning faces everywhere I go. Are they stalking me? Have they seen my image? Are they coming to rape me?” the woman said.
“His actions echo through every day of my life. He’s stolen something I can never get back.”
Defence barrister Morgan Brown said the victims were vehicles for Kiddle’s sexual fantasies, acknowledging the seriousness of the offending and her client’s early plea of guilty.
“Everyone does have the right to feel safe in this world, and it’s conceded the accused in this matter has prioritised his own sex gratification over acknowledging the danger into which these women were placed,” Brown said.
Judge Simon Moglia made it clear Kiddle didn’t intend for the women to be raped and the men he had lured to their homes or workplaces had no known intention to attack them.
Kiddle will be sentenced later this month. The court heard the only similar case on record in Victoria was his own prior offending in 2013 when he was convicted for inciting rape.
Both the prosecution and defence accepted he would face a significant period of time behind bars.
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