National

Charges over spate of beach sex attacks in late 1990s

Feb 15, 2026

A Toyota utility parked on the side of a road — A photo of a ute helped police close the net on a man charged with historical sexual assaults. -PR HANDOUT

A photo of a white ute and pioneering DNA technology may have cracked the case on a series of historical sex attacks on beaches.

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Rodney Faithful, 73, has been charged with sexually assaulting women and girls as young as 16 in the Central Coast area between 1997 and 2000.

His alleged offending includes forcibly and indecently touching a 23-year-old woman walking along a pathway at Shelly Beach in 1997 and sexually assaulting a 52-year-old woman sunbaking on Forresters Beach in 1998 after covering her face.

In another incident in 1998, a teenage girl walking up a bush track at Forresters Beach was pushed to the ground before being sexually assaulted.

Faithful allegedly forced a girl walking along a bush track at Budgewoi Beach into the sand the following year, before kicking, punching and indecently touching her.

Another 16-year-old girl was tripped and sexually assaulted after he allegedly ran at her and two other young girls walking along a trail at Putty Beach near Kilcare later in 1999.

In several of the alleged attacks, the man was naked.

Police on Tuesday released an image of a white Toyota ute, alleged to have been used to flee after at least one of the incidents, as they closed the net around their suspect.

Strike Force Caphs detectives swooped on Faithful on Friday morning, arresting him at a service station on Tweed Valley Way in Murwillumbah near the NSW-Queensland border.

He has since been charged with one count of sexual intercourse without consent, two counts of aggravated sexual assault-inflict actual bodily harm on victim, and three counts of assault with act of indecency.

Faithful is scheduled to next face court on Friday after being refused bail on Saturday.

Police noted the arrest followed a public appeal for information and the use of Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy.

Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy is an emerging technology in Australia allowing police to compare DNA profiles from multiple crimes to match genetic profiles.

The technique rose to prominence after it was used in 2018 to identify the "Golden State Killer", Joseph DeAngelo, for a string of murders and rapes in California in the 1970s and 1980s.