Adelaide’s worst child sex offenders revealed
Their awful crimes have been aired in courts across Adelaide. Here is a list of some of our city’s convicted child sex offenders who preyed on innocent children.
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They’ve preyed on our city’s most vulnerable and their despicable acts have been aired in courts across Adelaide.
These are some of Adelaide’s convicted child sex offenders and what happened when they faced the music.
COLIN HUMPHRYS
Arguably one of Adelaide’s most notorious paedophiles, Colin Humphrys has a long rap sheet of offending against children that ultimately changed laws.
It includes the kidnap and abuse of a child in the 1990s.
In 2009 he was locked up indefinitely and convicted of five counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old boy in a public toilet.
But, by 2018, he had applied to be released into the community and was given permission by Justice Trish Kelly to live in the Bowden-Brompton area.
News of his release sparked wide public outrage and the Director of Public Prosecutions launched an appeal to keep him behind bars.
Bipartisan laws then passed SA parliament requiring sex offenders who had been detained indefinitely to prove they were able to control their urges and no longer posed a danger to the community.
It must be verified by two psychiatrists.
Justice David Lovell this year consigned him to prison for life after ruling that he was unable to control his sexual urges.
GARY JOHN TIPPING
Repeat-offender Gary John Tipping has been given multiple chances to prove he has learnt his lesson.
Tipping was first convicted in 2006 for sexual offences against two boys, aged 12 and eight. He was sentenced to four years in prison with an 18-month non-parole period – but the sentence was suspended.
Months after being spared jail, he had unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old boy and was jailed.
Tipping was granted parole in December 2010 and – within months – had befriended a 15-year-old boy.
He was taken into custody in September 2012 for having sex with the teenager and was sentenced to six years and four months in prison in April 2015.
Tipping was last year released into the community after a failed emergency application from Attorney-General Vickie Chapman to keep him locked up indefinitely.
Within a month of his release, he broke his supervision order by signing up to an online chat and dating app and sending sexualised messages.
He was again released in May this year, on orders of the Supreme Court, on strict home detention.
VIVIAN FREDERICK DEBOO
Two men known as the “Masked Brothers” faced their abuser, Vivian Frederick Deboo, in court.
Deboo preyed on the brothers – then aged 11 and 13 – by using his standing as a respected member of the Baptist Church and community groups to gain access to children.
They were working at his catering business when he forced himself upon and abused the boys.
About 30 years later, he faced court on multiple counts of indecent assault and gross indecency against the boys.
Deboo, the court heard, told a psychologist his behaviour was “quite a normal part of (his) victims’ adolescent sexual development”.
He was sentenced to more than six years behind bars after pleading guilty – later losing an appeal against his jail time.
The repeat offender was also sentenced for similar crimes against three boys in 1996.
PETER LIDDY
Peter Liddy once upheld the law – dishing out punishments and deterrents to offenders as a magistrate.
But in 2001 he found himself on the other side of the fence, facing 10 counts of child sex offences.
Liddy continually abused multiple children at the Brighton Surf Lifesaving Club across the 1980s.
He was convicted of five counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a child under 12, four counts of indecent assault and one count of attempting to bribe one of his victims into not giving evidence.
He was handed a 25-year jail sentence – a record at the time.
Other alleged victims have come forward since, with a push in 2010 for Liddy to face another 10 child sex charges.
Those charges – for alleged offences between 1969 and 1983 – were ultimately thrown out due to the length of time since they allegedly occurred and concern over the ability for a fair trial.
Liddy applied for parole last year but remains behind bars.
SHANNON MCCOOLE
He was trusted to look after some of South Australia’s most vulnerable children – but wound up sparking a Royal Commission into the state’s child protection system when his vile crimes came to light.
Shannon McCoole admitted to offences against at least seven children in his care while working for the former Families SA – one as young as 18 months old.
One of the children had autism and another was disabled.
McCoole also ran an international child pornography website on which he said he was a “professional photographic sex instructor”, his interests were “anything below 12”, and his hobby was “sex, sex, sex, more sex, natural weight loss for chubby kids”.
Sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2015 with a non-parole period on 28 years, McCoole is regarded of one of the worst sex offenders in South Australian history.
It sparked the Child Protection Systems Royal Commission by Margaret Nyland, whose mammoth report found child protection in a parlous state and recommended 260 changes.
His sentence was reduced by three years in 2018 after helping police prosecute a European paedophile.
RUECHA TOKPUTZA
Considered Australia’s worst ever child sex predator, Ruecha Tokputza was convicted of a raft of offences unparalleled in the country’s legal history.
Tokputza abused 13 children in Australia and Thailand, breaking both South Australian and Commonwealth laws.
One of those children was 15 months old.
One victim was “in a nappy, sleeping”, Judge Liesl Chapman told the District Court last year, when Tokputza abused him.
He even filmed himself abusing the children, posting the videos online to encourage other paedophiles to do the same.
He abused the 13 children 51 times over six years.
Prosecutors said it was “hard to think of more serious offending” that Tokputza’s – putting him in an even worse category than McCoole.
Tokputza was sentenced to 40 years a three months in prison with a 28-year non-parole parole period.
His massive sentence puts him on-par with some of the state’s most notorious mass-murderers.
HAMZEH BAHRAMI
In April 2019, a 10-year old girl was at Blair Athol Reserve when she encountered Hamzeh Bahrami.
He led her into a public toilet block – now slated to be demolished due to its history and lack of safety.
Bahrami’s young daughter and niece, with whom he had been playing at the park, peered under the toilet door to see their father and uncle abusing the girl.
After kicking him and escaping eight minutes later, the girl went home to her mother who rushed to the park in an effort to find the man who abused her daughter.
DNA led police to Bahrami’s brother, who was arrested and quickly released because they had the wrong man.
Bahrami was charged with five counts of indecent assault and one charge of false imprisonment.
He was sentenced this year to four years and nine months in prison, with a three-year non-parole period.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has launched an appeal against his sentence because he was granted a 40 per cent discount on account of his early guilty plea.
MICHAEL CRAIG BULLOCK
Michael Craig Bullock has a long list of offences involving children, from abusing them to killing them.
His criminal history dates back as far as 1986.
In 2004, he was sentenced to nine years in prison after he pleading guilty to multiple offences including unlawful sexual intercourse with a six-year-old girl.
He has since been imprisoned for two counts of possessing child pornography and the indecent assault of a 16-year-old girl.
Then, in 2017, he hit two-year-old boy Zayne Colson with his car in a Dovar Gardens street, dragging him underneath the car for several metres, before driving off.
Zayne lay on the road unconscious while Bullock sped off and died an hour later from his injuries.
The convicted paedophile was sentenced to four years and seven months behind bars for the fatal hit and run, with a three-year and eight-month non-parole period.
PAUL WILLIAM THOMAS
He has an extensive history of child sex offences, and psychiatrists believe he is unable to control his sexual urges, but Paul William Thomas is in the community.
Thomas indecently assaulted an intellectually disabled teenager in 1995.
Then, in 2004, he abducted three boys from an Elizabeth park and took them to Maslin Beach where he made them swim naked.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of abducting a child and was later found guilty of six counts of inducing a child to expose his body.
He breached a control order in 2015 by living within 500 metres of a public park and loitering near a children’s toilet.
He breached the order again in the same year by allowing young boys to camp in his backyard.
In 2016, he was jailed indefinitely after pleading guilty to an aggravated count of accessing child exploitation material and failing to comply with reporting conditions as a registered sex offender.
Three Supreme Court justices last year overturned his indefinite detainment, allowing him to return to the community while completing a sex offenders rehabilitation program.
It was despite two psychiatrists saying he was in the “high risk” category for further offending.
He was released to an “outer suburban industrial area” – but a suppression prevents any other details being published.
PHILIP CORLETT CAREY
One of South Australia’s most notorious paedophiles, Philip Corlett Carey’s offending spanned more than 50 years.
Carey – who has also used the surnames Teare and Cryer – was first locked up in 1961 for indecent assaults against boys.
Over three decades, he served more sentences for similar offences – in 1969, 1973, 1979, 1984 and 1995.
Carey paid $2 for sexual favours from an 11-year-old boy in August 1994, repeatedly sexually assaulting him after collecting him from school and driving him to secluded locations.
He fell foul of the law again in January 1999, being arrested for approaching young boys in contravention of a paedophile restraining order.
Carey, who has been chemically castrated in an effort to control his urges, has also told police that he only abused pre-pubescent boys he did not know and regarded them as “a piece of meat” with no personality.
He was jailed again in 2007 for 47 breaches of his restraining order – and again for 12 months in 2014 after he was found in possession of 686 images depicting children under the age of 14.
Later that year, then Attorney-General John Rau made an application to the Supreme Court for Carey to be detained indefinitely.
LAURIE (LAURENCE) O’SHEA
Laurie O’Shea first abused children in the 1960s.
He was jailed indefinitely in 1977 because he was found to be unable to control his sexual urges.
But he was released on licence in 1980, 1983, 1987 and 1994 – each time breaching the conditions of his release and being sent back to prison by the Parole Board.
The Supreme Court twice knocked back applications for his release in 1997 – but he was given permission to again re-enter the community in 1998, on some of the strictest parole conditions ever imposed on a sex offender.
He left Yatala Labour Prison, his head covered, in August that year with the help of a Christian group, which organised for a decoy car to distract the waiting media scrum.
In 2011 he pleaded guilty to more child sex offences – for seven victims he abused at the Sunshine Camp for underprivileged children at Norton Summit, which he established with his wife, about four decades ago.
He was sentenced to two years in prison.