Adam Charles Lusk: Serial rapist jailed 28 years for drugging and raping 12 women, including three teenagers

Adam Lusk — the vile serial rapist who drugged and raped multiple women including three teenage girls — has been handed 28 years behind bars, believed to be the second longest jail term for a WA rapist.

In locking up the former Australian soldier, Judge Alan Troy described the 46-year-old’s offending as not only “calculated and predatory” but depraved, adding he had shown no mercy for his any of victims even when some had pleaded for him to stop.

Lusk drugged and/or raped 12 women he met either socially or through dating apps such as Sugar Daddy Meets or Tinder over an almost two-year period between April 2020 and January 2022. Three of the victims were teenagers. And all but three were filmed.

At his trial last year, the father-of-two denied he spiked their drinks so he could carry out the sick acts — claiming what took place was consensual. He also claimed all were happy to be filmed.

But Judge Troy said it was clear from the footage that none of the women were conscious let alone consenting adding that he could not work out if the civil engineer was so “self-deluded that he truly believed the denials he gave in evidence”.

Judge Troy told the court he had not watched the videos — which he deemed too disturbing for the public to view so closed to court when they were shown — before the trial began and that his first impression of what was contained in the first video would have been the same as the jury’s.

After viewing it, he said he asked Lusk’s lawyers if their client had actually seen the material because he found it “inexplicable” he was maintaining a not guilty plea.

“I have no doubt he was given the correct advice at many stages (of the trial),” Judge Troy said. “But in this footage, you can see she was completely unconscious.”

That footage related to Lusk’s first victim, a 19-year-old woman he drugged and raped at his Ascot home in April 2020.

Lusk had claimed in his police interview the woman was “role playing” and acting out a fantasy they had discussed prior. And in his testimony at trial, he claimed he made the video to “tease her” about being “lazy” during sex.

Judge Troy said dismissed his explanation as “another lie”.

He said Lusk knowingly raped an unconscious woman adding the crime was the beginning of a “depraved cycle” in which he preferred to drug his dates to take advantage of them despite knowing some would have had consensual sex.

Judge Troy said he was satisfied the primary driver behind Lusk’s offending was a deviant sexual interest in sexual activity with either heavily sedated or incapable of consenting women.

He also said it was “abundantly clear” had police not arrested him in January 2022 he would “have continued to offend against new victims and possibly repeat his offending against existing victims.”

The hearing was told some of his most depraved acts were carried out on a 16-year-old girl who he first met on Sugar Daddy Meet in 2020 when she was 15.

On one occasion, after she had passed out, Lusk recorded himself abusing the teen.

“The 97 guilty verdicts were, in my view, inevitable,” Judge Troy added.

During the hearing, the court was told a psychiatrist who examined Lusk concluded he was not a psychopath but had diagnosed him with post traumatic stress disorder from his time serving with the Australian Army in East Timor.

Judge Troy said he accepted Lusk he was stationed in the territory at the time of the unrest in 1999 but “in the absence” of any independent detail he was not prepared to accept what he said he may have witnessed.

He said at the highest his PTSD could have a causal link to his high-risk taking lifestyle he had at the time of the offences but there was no material to conclude it contributed to it.

In determining Lusk’s jail term, Judge Troy said his crimes were comparable to those of sadist ex-cop Adrian Moore who was handed 30 years for drugging and raping 13 different women over 12 years.

He said like Moore, Lusk’s crimes had a high level of depravity, both had recorded the rapes for their own sexual gratification and nothing any of their victims said deterred them from continuing.

But he said Lusk’s offending lacked the same level of brutality as Moore.

“Your offending, however, was far more profound and brazen and over a much shorter period,” he said adding that Lusk rendered his victims completely unconscious for extended periods of time and that his victims were all much younger than him, with three aged under 18.

He jailed Lusk for 28 years, backdated his sentence and made him eligible for parole.