The disgraced best-selling author Craig Silvey has claimed he experienced trauma as a child in a 9,000-word apology published after he was jailed for child exploitation offences. The young adult novelist was sentenced on Monday to seven months’ imprisonment, after being charged in January and subsequently pleading guilty to distributing and possessing depraved child exploitation material. The 44-year-old writer posted an article on his Substack titled “My Apology”.
He said that throughout his life he had always been able to find the right words, “but articulating the depth of my contrition and the enormity of my remorse feels beyond my aptitude for language”. I am appalled and mortified by my conduct, and I am deeply, profoundly sorry,” he wrote. Silvey said he suffered a “crisis of mental health and a destructive, despairing breakdown” before he offended.
He was found with numerous sexually explicit photos and videos of children and adults on his laptop and mobile phone when police raided his home in Fremantle. He also engaged in an online conversation with a person he believed shared his interest in child exploitation material, telling them he preferred boys older than five before adding that “eight was the perfect age”. Silvey, who has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin literary award and the International Dublin literary award, is best known for his 2009 coming‑of‑age novel Jasper Jones, which had been considered a modern Australian classic and was 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.
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