The 37-year-old was convicted in the state’s supreme court months after a different jury failed to reach a verdict on the same charges
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A former NSW Liberal politician is facing the possibility of a significant jail term after a jury found him guilty of raping a 13-year-old boy.
The former MP Rory Amon was found guilty by a jury, after about four hours of deliberation on Friday, of one count of sexual intercourse with a person aged between 10 and 14 and indecently assaulting a child.
The 37-year-old was facing his second NSW supreme court trial after a different jury acquitted him in March on eight separate charges of child sexual offending, but could not reach a verdict on the two counts decided on Friday.
The charges related to Amon’s interactions with a 13-year-old boy who the former MP met on an adults-only website, the court heard.
Amon always maintained his innocence, saying he held an honest and reasonable belief that the boy was over the age of 16.
The original trial was told the boy inflated his age when signing up to the gay hook-up app, and again while talking with Amon.
Amon and the boy exchanged explicit images before a 2017 meeting in the carpark of the boy’s apartment block, the court heard.
At the time he first contacted the youth, Amon was working full-time for the federal MP for Mackellar, Jason Falinski. Amon went on to serve two terms on Northern Beaches council before being elected as the Liberal MP for the state seat of Pittwater in 2023.
The charges scuppered Amon’s fledgling career in state politics, forcing his expulsion from the Liberal party and his resignation after his election in March 2023.
His exit had implications for the state Liberals, which lost the formerly safe seat to a teal independent at the subsequent byelection.
Amon remains on bail and will return to court for a sentencing hearing on 27 November.
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He is the third former NSW MP convicted of sexual offences in recent years. The former Kiama MP and Coalition minister Gareth Ward was jailed in 2025 for the sexual abuse of two young men, including a political staffer who was intoxicated after an event at NSW Parliament House. His three-year-nine-month minimum term expires in April 2029.
The former NSW minister Milton Orkopoulos was found guilty in 2023 of sexually abusing teenage boys while he was a state Labor MP. A jury found the 65-year-old guilty of 26 charges of sexual offending against four underage boys and supplying them with drugs over a decade, ending in 2003.
He had already served more than a decade in prison for sexual assault of a minor, indecent assault, supplying heroin and cannabis and other offences.
Support for anyone affected by the subject matter of this report is available at Full Stop Australia (1800 385 578).