A Canberra pub owner has admitted to repeatedly raping one former partner and illegally sharing intimate images of another, as well as committing sexual offences in the presence of a two-year-old child.
The 35-year-old man was arrested in June 2020 after the mother of his first victim, who had been going through family photos, found disturbing evidence of some of his crimes on an old camera memory card.
Police documents tendered in court at the time alleged the man had filmed and photographed himself sexually attacking his "heavily unconscious" then-partner during the early hours of New Year's Day in 2011.
Investigators raided three properties on the day they took the man into custody, seizing evidence including cameras and a USB drive.
They trawled through vast amounts of graphic material and ultimately charged the pub owner with 45 offences.
The man cannot be named for legal reasons.
When he appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court over the phone from Canberra's jail on Tuesday morning, he sounded defeated as he pleaded guilty to 22 charges.
In relation to the first victim, he admitted to four counts of sexual intercourse without consent and eight counts of committing an act of indecency without consent.
Those charges encompassed a total of six rapes and 22 acts of indecency.
He also pleaded guilty to three counts of committing an act of indecency in the presence of a child as part of the same series of charges, which stemmed from incidents in 2011 and 2012.
The 35-year-old further admitted to seven counts of distributing intimate images of another sexual partner without her consent.
Those charges, laid over incidents that occurred in 2017 and 2018, took into account 17 different incidences.
The remaining charges were withdrawn as a result of negotiations between prosecutors and defence lawyer Peter Woodhouse.
Mr Woodhouse told the court there would be some "tweaking" of two statements of facts before the documents outlining the offender's crimes were finalised.
After taking the pleas from the pub owner, who has been behind bars on remand for almost nine months, Chief Magistrate Lorraine Walker committed the man to the ACT Supreme Court for sentence.
His case will be mentioned there for the first time later this month.
