Dean Kaplan: Randwick Emanuel School teacher’s child abuse material
A teacher who was employed at a prestigious eastern suburbs school has admitted to possessing sick child abuse material. The 36-year-old, who also had his own fitness business, was arrested following a tip off from authorities in the US.
Central Sydney
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An ex-eastern suburbs teacher who saved more than a 1000 images of children in sexual poses told police he only kept them so he could report the source to authorities, or because they satisfied his “foot fetish”.
Court documents have revealed the shocking extent of Dean Earl Kaplan’s stash of child abuse material after he entered guilty pleas to three child exploitation charges on Tuesday.
Kaplan, 36, was stood down from his role as a fitness teacher at Randwick’s prestigious Emanuel School following his arrest by Australian Federal Police officers in June 2019.
He has now pleaded guilty to three charges; possession of child abuse material, using a carriage service to access child abuse material and using a carriage service to transmit child abuse material to himself.
Three other sequences – including two counts of possessing child abuse material and using a carriage service to transmit child abuse material – were withdrawn in court on Tuesday.
It can be revealed that officers found more than 1200 images and videos on two USBs and a hard drive seized from Kaplan’s Kensington unit on June 20, 2019.
The majority of the images were “sexually suggestive posing with no sexual activity”, according to the agreed facts tendered in court.
Some depicted pre-pubescent girls lying topless or in a bikini, teens dancing naked, a girl kissing toes and even one showing bestiality including a young girl and a cat.
Others contained children being “sexually harmed” by adults.
When he was interviewed at the AFP offices in Surry Hills last year, Kaplan told officers he trawled the internet to find abusive material so he could report them to authorities.
The personal trainer told police would find links to websites displaying child abuse material and send them to himself at using his work email account before saving them in a file stored on a USB.
He also saved some images and transferred them from his computer onto the external devices.
“For the past 22 years he probably accrued thousands of images and did not look at these images but just had it in an archive in case he reported it and was ever asked about it,” the facts state Kaplan told police.
Kaplan conceded images of underage girls in sexual poses were inappropriate but were only kept because they fulfilled his “foot fetish”, the facts state, and “not for anything else”.
He confessed he would search for keywords such as “child models” but was not into “hard core” material, saying that he was attracted to “teen feet”.
Court documents described the images as “highly provocative” showing children who were at least “partially clothed”.
The documents also revealed Kaplan once reported two websites containing child abuse material to the Australian Communication and Media Authority on April 1, 2013.
“I felt very troubled by what I came across and it is a relief to me that something is being done about it,” he said when called by staff following up his report.
Kaplan was arrested after the AFP’s Child Protection Operations received a tip from the United States National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children his online activities.
Officers stormed his eastern suburbs apartment on June 20, 2019, arresting Kaplan and seizing several electronic devices for analysis.
Parents at the Emanuel School, a Jewish institution which charges up to $20,000 per year in fees, were swiftly informed of his arrest and he was stood down.
He had worked at the school since 2016.
Kaplan, a University of Sydney graduate, also ran his own business Get A Grip Personal Training.
He will has been committed for sentence to the District Court and will next appear on July 17.