Balaclava youth club leader Shane Holleman jailed for raping multiple boys over eight-year period
A youth club leader who ran the ‘Balaclava Boys Club’ at St Margaret’s Presbyterian Church for more than a decade “orchestrated scenarios” to rape multiple victims including giving one boy ice cream to keep their “special friendship” a secret.
Inner South
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A Balaclava youth club leader raped several boys multiple times for almost 10 years, a court has heard.
Shane Holleman, 69, was sentenced in the County Court on Friday to a minimum 20 months’ jail after pleading guilty to five counts of indecent assault on a male.
Holleman ran the Balaclava Boys Club at the St Margaret’s Presbyterian Church between 1969 and 1977 while violating his victims.
The victims — all boys aged between 8 and 13 — were members of the youth club.
The boys only group — which later accepted girls — met every Friday night for games and activities but later met more frequently.
The court heard Holleman, a church member, “orchestrated scenarios” to get his victims alone and rape them.
Holleman raped one victim while they were alone in his car multiple times between 1969 and 1974.
Holleman, who often drove the boy home, told his victim that “if he enjoyed what happened then he should ask to be dropped off last”.
Holleman lured his second victim to his home where he raped the boy multiple times between 1975 and 1977.
Holleman also took this victim on a youth group camp with 15 other boys.
The court heard Holleman put the boy in his bed with “possibly other men”.
Holleman raped his third victim multiple times including at a carpark near the St Kilda Mariner in 1976.
Holleman told the boy their “friendship had to be kept very secret” and “the secret was very special”
The predator later gave the boy ice cream while “reminding him of their secret”.
Holleman’s victims reported the offending to others including police but he was not arrested
Police interviewed Holleman in 1995 and 2009 but he denied the allegations.
A victim requested police “reactivate” their investigation in 2014 but investigators did not act after they mistakenly thought the matter had been resolved.
Holleman was eventually charged in August 2018 after his lewd conduct was uncovered at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Holleman initially fought several charges which meant victims and witnesses were cross-examined at a committal hearing.
Holleman eventually pleaded guilty to less charges than he originally faced.
A victim said Holleman took away his trust which affected his personal relationships.
“I am angry and sad that you robbed me of my innocence and childhood,” the victim said in a statement.
The court heard Holleman has worked in a variety of jobs including a stint as a child protection officer for what is now the Department of Health and Human Services.
In 1978, while in that role, Holleman took five boys on an “outing” where he photographed them swimming naked in a river.
Holleman was transferred to a youth hostel manager position after he was charged and convicted of “making an obscene article”.
Holleman married a single mother of two boys who were members of the youth club.
The couple had two more children and moved to Trentham in northeast Victoria where Holleman established a successful novelty toy business.
He later joined the Daylesford Presbyterian Church.
The church’s minister the reverend Mark Crabb provided Holleman a reference for court.
The court heard Holleman entered into a “safety agreement” to attend the church and take part in certain activities.
Judge Rosemary Carlin said Holleman “orchestrated scenarios” to get his victims alone and gave two victims “treats” after sexually assaulting them.
“You repeatedly sexually abused three young boys who had been entrusted to your care by their parents …,” Judge Carlin said.
“You had ample opportunity over the two or more years of your offending to reflect on your conduct and desist but you did not, instead making a deliberate decision to offend again.
“This repeated offending not only increases your moral culpability for your later crimes it tends to undermine any attribution of responsibility for your earlier crimes to immaturity.
“You were intent on satisfying your own sexual desires regardless of the consequences.”
Judge Carlin said the “fact” the youth club “operated out of a church hall” was “not without significance”.
“It is unrealistic to think the club did not derive some status or respectability from the church in whose shadow it operated,” Judge Carlin said.
“At the very least a parent of any child attending would have been entitled to assume that the church approved of you renting the hall to run the club.
“In sexually abusing boys who attended you not only breached the trust of the boys, you breached the trust of their parents and you breached the trust of the church.”
Holleman was jailed for a maximum 37 months and made a registered sex offender for life.
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