Former Beaconsfield Primary School teacher Nicholas O’Shea sends masturbation videos to teens

A former Beaconsfield teacher who sexually assaulted teenage boys has caused “anguish” among his former school and sports communities, a court has heard.

Beaconsfield Primary School teacher Nicholas O'Shea pleaded guilty to a series of charges related to sexual offending against young people.

A former Victorian primary school teacher has partly blamed his repressed homosexuality as a cause of his “predatory” and “protracted” sexual offending against young people.

Nicholas O’Shea, 31, appeared at County Court on Friday, having pleaded guilty to 13 charges related to sexual offending against mainly teenagers.

The court heard O’Shea’s victims were drawn from his associations as a teacher at Beaconsfield Primary School and membership of Dandenong Baseball Club and Berwick Baseball Club.

No offending was directed towards students of Beaconsfield while O’Shea was a teacher there, but rather to students who had left the institution.

Using Snapchat, O’Shea sent pictures of his penis and videos of him masturbating to several victims and requested intimate photos of them.

In instances of physical contact, he positioned his genitalia against the backsides and fondled the penises of some complainants.

One former Beaconsfield student, then in high school, wrote, “Is this my Year 6 teacher?” once the pair had interacted on Snapchat.

“Don’t tell anyone,” O’Shea told him.

“It’s a secret.”

Nicholas O'Shea. Picture: Facebook

The court heard that O’Shea had difficulty coming to terms with his homosexuality, which he hid until his 30th birthday, feeling shame and failing to find sufficient emotional connection through “liaisons” organised, for example, on the app Grindr.

His offending, he reported, occurred when he was drunk, as the alcohol exacerbated his mental struggles.

O’Shea described himself as “immature” and said he was attracted to younger men in his late teens and early 20s, but denied being attracted to them now.

The court was told he might have under-reported his attraction to “young bodies”, and prosecutor Zoran Petric, who called the offending “predatory, persistent, and protracted”, stated there were “unexplored aspects” to O’Shea’s actions, including his potential hebephilic interests.

“It’s not relevant whether the accused’s orientation was homosexual or heterosexual,” they said.

“The offending against children warrants general deterrence and denunciation.”

O'Shea’s victims were former Beaconsfield Primary School students and associates from baseball clubs.

O’Shea’s lawyer Peter Chadwick responded that it was not his client’s homosexuality per se, but more the “conflict within him” that contributed to the offending.

One victim told the court through a statement that he had been “scared that people would be mad at me or blame me for everything”.

“I felt like I was trapped in a really difficult situation and I didn’t know what to do,” he said.

The mother of a victim said it was “beyond comprehension” that her son was exposed to O’Shea’s behaviour, and that her maternal instinct had been “shaken to its very core”.

She said that in a display of “utterly reprehensible” behaviour, O’Shea told her son he would kill himself.

“No child should ever be subjected to such emotional manipulation and intimidation,” she said.

Someone involved with Beaconsfield Primary School said there were feelings of “anguish and self-doubt” among staff at the school.

“We are a community in crisis grappling with the devastating realisation that our trust and vigilance may not have been enough to protect our children from harm,” they said.

In apology letters tendered to the court, O’Shea said he was “truly remorseful” and “deeply ashamed and embarrassed”, adding that he took full responsibility for his actions.

“It doesn’t matter what state of mind I was in; I should never have behaved the way I did,” he said.

“ … I wish I could take back all that I’ve done.”

O’Shea has been abstinent from alcohol for more than a year.

O’Shea will face County Court for sentencing in 2025.

Judge Stewart Bayles said the impact of O’Shea’s offending on those around him was “clearly significant”.

“The nature of the impact, not just on the individuals, but on parents, community – school community, baseball club community – involving breach of trust: it just brings home quite palpably the extent of the impact that conduct such as this has,” he said.

O’Shea will be assessed for a community correction order and then be sentenced on January 31, 2025.

His bail was extended.

An earlier indication by Judge Bayles suggested O’Shea would not be imprisoned as he had no priors, was young at the time of offending, was remorseful, and was prepared to engage in treatment.