South Australia’s worst child exploitation offenders including Shane Lunnay, Michael Bocchino
From a YouTube gamer to a priest and an Adelaide teacher who led a sinister double life, we reveal some of the state’s worst child exploitation offenders.
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They came from all walks of life – school teachers, priests, YouTube gamers – and they all preyed on our most innocent with devious crimes including possessing thousands of depraved videos and images of underage children.
Here are the evil faces of SA’s child exploitation underworld.
SHANE ANDREW LUNNAY
Ponytailed videogamer Shane Andrew Lunnay – who posted videos to YouTube under the name of “Radical Dreamer Shane-O” – was jailed for child exploitation material offences in September this year.
Lunnay, 35, of Parafield Gardens, imported close to 1000 hentai magazines – containing Japanese animated child pornography – over a period of about a year between 2018 and 2019.
Some of those publications depicted children as young as three as well as animals.
Lunnay also had more than 1500 images and videos of child exploitation material – a mixture of animation and real footage – on computers and hard drives.
In court it was also revealed he illegally imported animated Japanese child pornography and streamed himself online having sex with a doll.
Judge Geraldine Davison told the District Court in September that Lunnay’s use of animated material may have led to his consumption of real child abuse material.
He was charged with a string of state offences for possessing child exploitation material and federal offences for importing the magazines.
Lunnay was sentenced to one year, two months and 13 days behind bars with an eight month non-parole period and fined $2000.
LEE JAMES
Just three months after receiving a second chance, disgraced educator Lee James once again descended into child pornography – and his deviancy cost him 23 months’ jail.
In January 2016, the District Court ordered the 45-year-old founder of the Willunga Academy of Rock after-school program serve immediate prison time for swapping child exploitation material via social media.
This music school was in no way affiliated with the Australian Academy of Rock, based in Stepney.
Judge Paul Slattery also activated James’ suspended eight-month jail term, imposed in November 2014, for possessing 41 perverted, exploitative images of children.
“You say you are drawn to pornography that is confronting and bizarre, and the offences have little to do with your own sexual interests,” Judge Slattery said.
“You say you do not have a fascination with child pornography, that it is part of a wider addiction to all forms of pornography.
“I’m not able to accept that submission … you were given a second chance and, within a few months, you had fallen foul of the law again.”
James pleaded guilty to one aggravated count each of possessing and producing child pornography, occurring in February and March 2015.
On those occasions, James received and sent illicit material to another man via the social media app “Kik”, including a fictional story he had written.
His actions breached the terms of his suspended sentence, which banned him from internet use for three years and required he perform 120 hours of community service in 18 months.
FATHER STANISLAUS JOHN HOGAN
The senior priest at a prestigious Adelaide private school was jailed for two years and six months for downloading more than 1500 depraved images of child pornography.
Father Stanislaus John Hogan, then 69, pleaded guilty in the District Court to one count of using a carriage service to access child pornography and one aggravated count of possessing child pornography.
The court heard police had seized 1555 images and videos as part of an illicit children pornography collection, which also included magazines and books of children aged between three and 16 years.
In sentencing in March, 2015, Judge Peter Brebner detailed some of the horrific child exploitation material police found during a police raid of Hogan’s Saint Ignatius College residence at Athelstone in 2012.
He said Hogan’s offending had came about as he struggled to understand his sexuality.
“You struggled for years to reconcile your ethical, religious, spiritual and philosophical beliefs with your sexuality and your prurient interests in child pornography,” Judge Brebner said.
WILLIAM RUSSELL
A Findon man who ran a public campaign for online teen safety was eventually exposed as a predator himself.
It was a lofty fall from grace for 25-year-old William Russell, who in was 2016 nominated for Youth South Australian of the Year for his online “Teen Support Network”.
Russell pleaded guilty to procuring a child for sexual activity, communicating with a child to make them amenable or sex and aggravated and basic counts of possessing child exploitation material.
He was found in possession of 51 child exploitation material files.
Russell’s computers were both encrypted and capable of accessing the dark web, the District Court heard in November last year.
Chief Judge Evans noted Russell’s prior good character and childhood difficulties, including overcoming physical and intellectual disabilities, bullying and parental problems.
“I accept you are embarrassed and ashamed by your offending, and that you will find imprisonment very difficult,” Chief Judge Evans said.
“Your prognosis to cease offending is fair … doctors believe you are motivated to rehabilitate.
“However you have poor insight into your offending and rationalise your behaviour.
“Doctors are of the opinion you would have clearly understood the wrongfulness of your actions … despite your disability, you know your behaviour was unacceptable.”
He was jailed for two-and-a-half years with a 12-month non-parole period.
MICHAEL REECE BRITTON
Michael Reece Britton – an ice user who took pictures of sleeping young girls and shared them with other deviants online – was jailed for four-and-a-half years in June, 2018.
He received a non-parole period of two years and three months after pleading guilty to charges of producing, possessing and disseminating child pornography material.
The District Court heard Britton abused the trust of two female friends by taking photographs of their daughters, aged eight and 10 at the time, in Adelaide’s northern suburbs in 2016 and 2017.
Police first charged Britton after he posted a photo of himself online with a toy gun in his mouth, before they searched his mobile phone and found numerous images and videos of child exploitation material stored on the device.
Judge Wayne Chivell agreed with a forensic psychologist that the 31-year-old’s crimes stemmed from “pedophilic tendencies”.
“While I accept that the drug may have disinhibited you to some extent, you cannot hide behind drugs for this offending,” Judge Chivell said.
MICHAEL ANTHONY BOCCHINO
Michael Anthony Bocchino had “two faces”, according to a District Court judge.
By day he was a respected teacher, by night he was a cannabis-smoking paedophile who perpetuated the traumatic abuse of children.
Bocchino, then 59, admitted accessing, viewing and then deleting thousands of images of child pornography over six years.
In 2014, Judge Paul Muscat jailed the former Marryatville and Adelaide high school teacher for 33 months, with a 16-month non-parole period.
He said Bocchino’s conduct was made all the more heinous by his teaching career and excellent standing in the community, and too serious to warrant a suspended sentence.
“Bocchino is a man who had two faces – he had a public face and a private face,” Judge Muscat said.
“To those who knew him in public, he was held in high regard (as) a very caring, insightful, intelligent man and a great teacher … that’s all now been thrown out the window, permanently.
“I would have thought, of all people in the community, teachers would know of the trauma that will flow on to children who are abused.
“It just beggars belief that, while being in that position (as a teacher) he was contributing to the abuse and trauma of innocent children.”
Bocchino, 59, had previously pleaded guilty to one basic count and one aggravated count of possessing child pornography.
The offences occurred at Valley View on January 27, 2014 – Bocchino resigned on February 13.
Kris Handshin, for Bocchino, said police recovered 1800 video files from the temporary memory cache of his client’s computer.
Of those, investigators viewed 600 and determined at least 27 contained child exploitation material, some featuring children as young as three.
Mr Handshin said his client accepted he had “perpetuated the insidious abuse of children”, causing him a “very pervasive sense of shame, guilt and embarrassment”.
JOHN IAN GOODCHILD
An Adelaide man was jailed for four years for possessing and distributing child exploitation material, after being caught going onto internet chatrooms.
Police would find more than 1000 images and 130 videos on the computers of 31-year-old John Ian Goodchild.
In sentencing Goodchild in January 2018, District Court Judge Julie McIntyre said some of the material was both distressing and disturbing, and depicted some of the vilest forms of abuse.
“All of the material I viewed was degrading, depraved and distressing,” Judge McIntyre said.
She also described the chatrooms accessed by Goodchild as “particularly deviant”.
His arrest was part of an international investigation involving Australian Federal Police working with authorities in a number of other countries.
SHANNON MCCOOLE
Former Families SA social worker Shannon McCoole was sentenced to a minimum of 28 years behind bars in August, 2015 for the vile sexual abuse of seven young children in a case, which sparked a royal commission into the organisation.
McCoole, then 33, pleaded guilty to a horrifying list of sex offences committed against young children in his care. They were as young as 18 months old. One had autism. Another was disabled.
McCoole was also described as the “CEO” of an international child pornography website with more than 1000 members.
He would share videos and photos of him abusing his victims with fellow paedophiles around the world.
Cheers rang out across the courtroom as District Court Judge Paul Rice sentenced McCoole to 35 years in prison with a non-parole period of 28 years.
McCoole’s arrest, in July, 2014, triggered the establishment of a royal commission into the state’s child protection system, led by former Supreme Court justice Margaret Nyland.
DANIEL DESMOND GILLARD
Daniel Desmond Gillard was jailed in June, 2019 for two-and-a-half years for trying to film up the dress of a 10-year-old girl in a department store and for an aggravated charge of possessing child exploitation material.
Police seized two desktop computers and a USB stick and found more than 12,000 files containing child pornography.
In a psychological assessment, the 54-year-old said he had been downloading child pornography since 2000.
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