Man with foot fetish pleads for lenient sentencing
By IANSThursday, February 3, 2011
SYDNEY - A Victorian man, with a bizarre sexual preference for sucking toes, has appealed in the court against harsh punishment despite his strange conduct with a teenager.
Channa Wickremesekera, 43, a former Melbourne teacher turned a toe-sucking ’slave’ to the teenage ‘foot master’ and committed indecent acts with him. The boy had allegedly advertised on YouTube for someone to ‘worship’ his feet, The Age reported Thursday.
The County Court Wednesday heard Wickremesekera had a foot fetish, was “sexually submissive” and “gains sexual gratification from worshipping male feet that he considers to be beautiful”.
Prosecutor Catharine Sedgwick told the court that the couple conversed in 2009 via MSN chat sessions. They later met in secluded bushland where the man gave the victim $50. In return, they boy gave his socks to “worship” (kiss) them at home on webcam.
During three further meetings, the man sucked some of the victim boy’s toes and gave him a new pair of Converse All Stars shoes along with 10 pairs of sock for the boy to wear and dirty.
Wickremesekera, who had pleaded guilty to charges that included two counts of committing an indecent act, appealed to Judge Damian Murphy against the severity of an 18-month sentence with a minimum of 10 months which was imposed by a magistrate last October.
Wickremesekera’s lawyer, Sean Cash, said kissing or sucking someone’s toes “in terms of a level of indecency is hardly very indecent … it’s just unusual or perhaps unpalatable for us to the deal with”.
Judge Murphy has, meanwhile, adjourned his appeal decision to have Wickremesekera assessed for a specialist sexual offenders’ programme that will partly investigate reoffending.
