Award‑winning Australian children’s author Craig Silvey jailed over child exploitation material

The award‑winning author Craig Silvey sent multiple messages about his sexual desire for young boys and was caught with explicit images of children and adults.

The young adult novelist was jailed on Monday for seven months after pleading guilty to distributing and possessing child exploitation material in January.

The 44-year-old was found with numerous category one photos and videos on his laptop and mobile phone when police raided his Fremantle home, the Western Australian district court heard.

Silvey, a father of three, also engaged in an online conversation with another user on a pornography website, where his handle was Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.

In the chat, Silvey described himself as a “Fremantle guy” before telling the user “you sound amazing … we have very similar interests, would love to chat more; do you have Signal or Session?”

The pair moved to an encrypted messaging app, where he said he was “extremely open-minded and obsessed with taboos” and preferred boys aged five-plus before adding that “eight was the perfect age”.

“I want to make out with little ones,” the author said in one message.

Silvey, who has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, also wrote he was “drooling” over a sexually explicit photo of a naked man and boy together.

Judge Hayley Cormann said it was very serious and very disturbing offending.

“This offending involves children and it is destructive and it is devastating,” she said.

The popular author is best known for his 2009 coming‑of‑age novel Jasper Jones, considered a modern Australian classic and adapted into a feature film and several stage productions.

He has also been widely recognised for other books, including Rhubarb, Honeybee – which won the Australian Indie Book Award in 2021 – and the children’s novel Runt, which was also made into a film.

Publishers Allen & Unwin and Fremantle Press, which released Rhubarb, stopped promoting his books after Silvey was charged and most of his titles were removed from reading lists across the country.

Two charges of producing and possessing further child exploitation material were dropped in May.