A serial sex offender exposed his penis to a 12-year-old Canberra school girl before asking her for a hug, causing her to fear she would be raped, a court has heard.
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Craig Paul Meyboom, 43, has pleaded guilty to an act of indecency and appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court on Thursday for sentence.
Before the sentence, prosecutors read out loud a victim impact statement from the girl.
In it, the girl said she walked past Meyboom's house to get to school and they would occasionally wave to each other.
On this day they had waved to each other but when the girl later looked up from her phone she saw him in front of her and had a weird gut feeling.
She said he kept looking back at her as she walked.
As she came closer she saw he had pulled his pants down to show her his penis and testicles.
She looked back down at her phone and kept walking but soon saw feet.
Meyboom said: "You're pretty."
The girl replied "thank you", and the man then asked for a hug while his genitals were still exposed, which the girl declined.
"I'm glad you're going to jail because what you did was wrong," she said in a statement.
"You have taken advantage of me, and also taken away my safety and human rights."
The girl said she had been raised to know what to do in this situation, and was thankful she was not naive enough to give Meyboom a hug when he asked.
But she said she no longer felt safe outside or in her home.
Her father wrote a victim impact statement too, telling the court his daughter was not as carefree and innocent as she once was, and is now too uncomfortable to walk to school.
A prosecutor said Meyboom had got into his car and driven to Lanyon Marketplace for the sole purpose of approaching her, after he saw her walk past his home that morning.
"It's planned, deliberate and it's quite clearly for sexual gratification," the prosecutor said.
She said Meyboom had completed a sex offender program but continued to offend.
This offence was not an aberration, she said.
She called for a lengthy term of imprisonment.
A defence lawyer for Meyboom said the man had schizophrenia and that the crime was at the lower end of the range of seriousness, given there was no physical contact and it was brief.
But the prosecutor suggested it was higher, and Special Magistrate Margaret Hunter agreed.
"He decides to follow her with an evil intent, and that's disgusting. And she's 12. And it's not the first time," she said.
"He's a danger to the community."
Ms Hunter will sentence Meyboom in May.
