Adam Charles Lusk committed 97 offences drugging and recording the sexual abuse of a dozen women during Covid

A former soldier who drugged and raped multiple women he met over social media dating apps has blamed his post-traumatic-stress disorder for the offending, a court has been told. Perth father Adam Charles Lusk, 46, drugged and raped 12 victims multiple times between 2020 and 2022 after meeting them on Tinder, Snapchat and sugar daddy dating apps. Following a complaint to police, detectives seized Lusk’s phone and found videos of the sexual abuse in a folder titled “secret”. Some of the women had no memory of the assault and only found out what occurred after police approached them about the recordings found on Lusk’s phone. Three of his victims were teenagers aged 17 and 16 when the offending occurred. One of the women wrote in a victim impact statement the sadistic nature of Lusk’s actions and deceit still haunted her to this day. Lusk’s lawyer Anthony Elliott said a psychiatric report submitted to the court showed his client was not a psychopath, but had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which had arisen from his military service. Mr Elliott said Lusk was deployed to East Timor several times and had interrogated people who were responsible for a massacre during the conflict. He said a doctor found Lusk’s PTSD diagnosis in relation to his military service had a causal association with his offending. “There is no evidence of him having engaged in this sort of abhorrent conduct earlier in his life and this all seems to have developed following the death by suicide of his military colleague,” Mr Elliot said. His lawyer said a doctor found Lusk’s separation from his wife in 2015 and the death of his friend put him in a situation where coping mechanisms he relied on in the past were no longer effective. “He dealt with his issues through exercise, drugs and alcohol and it seems, if you accept what the doctor says, he then seemed to slip into promiscuous sexual activity which led to his decline and an inability to cope with PTSD.” State prosecutor Elizabeth Noonan said while they accepted Lusk served in the military, they would not accept Lusk’s level of detail about his military service without further corroboration. Judge Alan Troy agreed, telling the court he struggled to believe anything Lusk said about what he saw or did during his military service having presided over the trial. “I’m not going to accept what he said because during the trial he lied and lied and lied about the offences of which he is being convicted,” he said. Lusk will be sentenced on Friday.