By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Noble Park man who swapped “depraved” child sex abuse images with a Narre Warren school teacher has been released on a four year supervision order.
Jarrod Lyons, 28, pleaded guilty at the Victorian County Court to transmitting, soliciting and possessing child abuse material.
He’d exchanged images and videos online with former Fountain Gate Secondary College teacher Benjamin Heels, who pleaded guilty last year to sexual assault of a child and sending child abuse material.
“It appears that real children were abused in order to create the videos and images,” sentencing judge Helen Syme said on 17 January.
“I accept that you weren’t an abuser of those children but the fact was that real children were abused by someone else.”
The pair communicated “extensively” and explicitly on messaging apps Telegram and Kik while swapping a “relatively small” amount of child abuse material.
Some of the “particularly depraved” images included “adult males penetrating young or very young children”.
Lyons was arrested after police raided his home and seized two phones on 14 September 2021.
He was on a community corrections order at the time but received a level of supervision that was of “little use to you”, Judge Syme noted.
Judge Syme said Lyons’s offending was linked to a “tragic” and “significantly” deprived, abused and disrupted childhood.
His culpability was reduced by his “myriad” of intellectual, drug and mental health issues.
These included fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, depression and borderline personality.
His risk of reoffending was assessed as being linked to a relapse into substance abuse.
Judge Symes said the community’s protection was best served by Lyons being supervised and assisted under a “rigorous” treatment regime.
His cooperation with police and his early guilty plea entitled him to a 40 per cent sentencing discount, the judge said.
She also took into account Lyons’s 16 months in remand since his arrest.
Lyons was sentenced to 32 months’ jail but released immediately on a four-year recognisance release order.
Under the order, Lyons must attend treatment for drug, alcohol and mental health issues, as well as sexual offender therapy.
He was ordered to report as a sexual offender for life.
Meanwhile, Heels and boyfriend Tristan Cullinan-Smythe are in custody awaiting sentence.
