Serial sex pest Gary John Tipping appears in court facing new child sex charges, just after being let out

A serial paedophile is facing new child sex charges, alleged to have occurred just months after he was controversially released from prison.

Notorious sexual predator Gary John Tipping, who the Supreme Court last year released into the community despite opposition from the Attorney-General, is back behind bars charged with more child-sex offences.

Tipping, 35, appeared via video link from custody in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Wednesday on a file with multiple charges including two counts of producing child-exploitation material, one aggravated count of possessing child-exploitation material and one count of attempting to obstruct or pervert the course of justice.

The offences are alleged to have happened at Wingfield between September and December last year.

The court heard Tipping was also appearing for the first time on a separate file alleging a further nine sex offences, including five counts of engaging in sexual intercourse with a person without consent.

Gary Tipping outside the District Court during an earlier appearance.

Those offences allegedly happened in regional South Australia in 2018 and 2019.

Attorney-General Vickie Chapman has applied to have the serial pedophile detained three times. The Supreme Court has rejected two of those bids.

A third application for his continued detention was launched this year. A hearing for that application has been set down for October.

A spokeswoman for Ms Chapman said she was unable to provide any comment in light of the new charges.

Tipping’s history of offending dates back to 2006, when he received a suspended four-year jail term for sexually abusing two young boys, aged eight and 12.

Months later, he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old boy and was jailed in 2007 for six years for those offences.

Two months after his release on parole in 2010, he sexually abused another boy, aged 15, and in 2015 was sentenced to a further six years in prison. In 2019, a clinical psychiatrist found the serial offender was unwilling to control his sexual behaviour.

Despite the finding – and warnings from the SA Parole Board and two psychiatrists that he was likely to reoffend, had poor insight into his crimes and had not engaged well with treatment – the Supreme Court granted his supervised release.

Tipping was subsequently returned to jail in October 2019 because he breached the supervision order by sending sexualised messages and pictures of his genitalia to other men over a messaging app.

He was released into the community again in May 2020, when the Supreme Court refused to make an order keeping him in custody for the remaining 4½ years of an extended supervision order, despite breaching its conditions within a month of being released.

At the time, Justice Kevin Nicholson said Tipping’s risk to the community had not changed since the initial order to release him into the community.

He placed strict conditions on Tipping’s release, including that he wear a monitoring device at all times and not leave his home without permission. Tipping was also required to notify police of any social media or online messaging accounts and hand over passwords.

His access to the internet was restricted for six months, which Justice Nicholson said at the time would “give some assurance” that “Tipping can be trusted not to access the internet at all except when authorised”.

“It also gives Tipping a chance to demonstrate that he can be trusted over a lengthy period, which is an important thing bearing in mind that so soon after he was released last time he breached that trust,” Justice Nicholson said at the time. At the time, Tipping told the court: “I want to do everything right and do as I’m told.”

In February this year, Tipping was back behind bars and Ms Chapman again asked the Supreme Court to have him detained indefinitely. He is due to return to court this month.