A local male teaching assistant was sentenced to 42 years in prison and 24 strokes of the cane after he sexually assaulted 11 boys and filmed a total of 105 pornographic videos of them in the course of more than seven years of service in a childcare centre.
The 30-year-old accused pleaded guilty to six counts of aggravated sexual assault in the High Court yesterday (Aug 22), and another 54 related charges were considered when the judge handed down the sentence.
Given that the victims were all under the age of 14 at the time of the crime, the court ordered that the names of the accused and the childcare centre not be released to protect the victims.
Court documents showed that the accused who taught at the childcare centre was also a student there when he was in primary school, and he occasionally returned to the centre to help out after he went to secondary school. After completing his national service in 2012, he volunteered at the centre, teaching students mathematics about four to five times a week.
The accused won the trust of the person in charge of the centre, and not only was entrusted with the key to the centre, but the person in charge had also given the accused an allowance since 2013.
The accused also abused his authority to approach and sexually assault 11 boys at the centre between 2013 and August 2020. To gain trust, the accused often gave victims gifts, treated them to meals, and took them out to play outside of school hours.
The accused started with only hugs and kisses on the cheeks of the victims, then deep kissing them on the lips, and then sexually assaulted them in the centre, the accused residence, etc. The accused had also asked two or three victims to perform sexual acts in his presence.
One of the victims was found to have post-traumatic stress disorder during a psychological evaluation in 2021 but has since recovered.
The accused was arrested after police were notified on April 22, 2020, by the Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team (JACET) of South Australia that at least 17 emails containing child pornography could be traced back to the accused email address.
In August of the same year, when the police searched the accused residence, they found pornographic videos of the victim shot by him and seized a total of 105 related videos in the accused electronic devices.
The accused was arrested in December. His psychological report indicated that the defendant was a paedophile and had a mild to moderate risk of recidivism.
In sentencing, the High Court judge said the defendant abused the respect and trust placed in him by the victim and his parents, adding that the crime was premeditated and carefully planned.
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