Dean Kaplan: Ex Emanuel School teacher guilty of child porn offences

Shocking details have revealed how a recovering porn addict and former teacher at a prestigious eastern suburbs school was found with a stash of over 1000 images of child abuse material.

Dean Kaplan has pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography.

A recovering porn addict and former teacher at a prestigious eastern suburbs school found with a stash of over 1000 images of child abuse material has denied he is attracted to children.

Dean Earl Kaplan, 36, was arrested in June last year by Australian Federal Police officers following an overseas tip-off where a dossier of adult and child pornographic websites, a document he had been adding to since 2010, was located.

Dean Kaplan leaves court with his mum. Picture: Jeremy Piper

The eastern suburbs man who previously worked at Randwick’s Emanuel School told the District Court, after pleading guilty to three charges including possession of child abuse material, that he reported the child pornography websites to authorities as soon as he sourced it.

Kaplan told the court, when giving evidence, his foot fetish had extended over time to younger girls which led to the him ‘hoarding’ the child pornography images.

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The Kensington man, when being cross examined by the crown prosecutor, said his search for child pornography was sexually gratifying although he said he didn’t engage with the content.

“At the time I didn’t actively search for children … it is not my interest at all,” he said. “I was interested in young feet. I know now I never should be looking for it in the first place.”

The 36-year-old man broke into tears when revealing the extent of his porn addiction, revealing he no longer accessed porn and he now knows what he was doing was wrong.

Kaplan was teaching fitness at Randwick’s Emanuel School.

The court heard one of the images found on Kaplan’s USB stick was of a pre-pubescent girl, naked from the waist down, in a provocative pose with a cat.

The USB stick included images of young girls in sexually provocative poses, exposing their genitalia and breasts, with the majority of the 1060 pictures being “sexually suggestive posing with no sexual activity”, the agreed facts state.

Kaplan told the court he had been shunned from the Australian Jewish community since his arrest and would soon need to undergo a kidney transplant.

The sentencing was adjourned for a report from Correctives NSW about how his health conditions would be managed in prison.

The matter will return to court later this year.