The Moore Park rapist has told his victims he did not surrender to police because he was “a coward and afraid of the ramifications” for himself and his family, as he gave evidence during his sentencing hearing in Sydney.
Glenn Gary Cameron, 62, was arrested in February 2024, more than 30 years after he stalked and attacked eight women in Sydney during the 1990s.
Appearing by videolink in the NSW District Court on Monday, Cameron said he had become a Buddhist and was trying to make peace with his crimes. He also spoke about his childhood, drug use and the effect of his offending on his victims.
“I perpetrated some of society’s most heinous crimes,” Cameron wrote in a letter read to the court by his barrister.
“I wish I could explain my actions to my victims and the people I have hurt to help bring some sort of closure to the pain, but I really can’t.”
Cameron pleaded guilty last year to 13 charges, including aggravated indecent assault.
Between 1991 and 1993, he approached women in Surry Hills, Moore Park and Sydney’s inner west while claiming to be a police officer or an art student looking for a model. He then held a knife to his victims and forced them into alleyways.
Police had found DNA on the skirt of his first victim, but the investigation ended in 1993 without identifying a suspect. The case was reopened in 2022, when the sample was searched against a national database and produced a familial match to one of Cameron’s children.
The investigation led officers to a funeral home in Alice Springs, where Cameron worked as a director. He was arrested while travelling to Thailand via Sydney after police obtained DNA from a glass he had used at the airport and raided his hotel room.
Cameron said he had often considered going to police but feared the consequences.
“I knew deep down that morally I should have gone to the police and present myself, but the truth is I was a coward and afraid of the ramifications not only on myself and my family but also for my victims,” he said.
He said he had worried that his victims might have wanted to keep what happened secret and that reporting himself could bring “shame back onto them”.
Cameron told the court he could not remember much of what he had done, attributing this either to substance abuse at the time or the passage of many years. But he said his lack of memory did not alter his responsibility.
“What I do know is that I’m guilty and even if I don’t recall everything it doesn’t mean I did not do such things,” he said.
He said he hoped his arrest would bring the women some closure. The sentencing hearing continues.
