Mildura teacher Jack Freeman sentenced over grooming and child sex abuse of vulnerable students

A Mildura teacher whose “sinister and predatory” behaviour went unchecked for almost a decade left a mother isolated from the community who thought she “crazy”.

Ex-primary school teacher Jack Freeman was sentenced in the Mildura Magistrates’ Court on December 1 on multiple child sex abuse charges.

The mother of a “vulnerable” student targeted by a pedophiile teacher said people in the community called her “crazy” after she first reported his offending.

In a victim impact statement read out to court, she said the lack of action taken by police and the education department left her isolated and ostracised by the Mildura community for almost a decade.

Jack Freeman, 32, returned to Mildura Magistrates’ Court on December 1 where he was sentenced to a 12 month suspended sentence after pleading guilty to one charge of grooming a child by words and conduct to facilitate involvement in a sexual offence and one charge of attempting to groom a child under the age of 16 after parents exposed his messages to young, vulnerable students.

Freeman first offended in 2014 when he was a teacher at The Lake Primary School, teaching a 5/6 composite class.

Freeman targeted his first victim as his parents were experiencing a marriage breakdown and messaged his mother to inform her of the contact.

The court heard the mother had initially been pleased that her son had a role model, but after discovering the insidious truth “felt sick” whenever she heard the offender’s name.

Freeman would use the classroom environment to target vulnerable kids who were experiencing family breakdowns bullying.

“In hindsight I now know this is what predators do,” the court heard.

“And Jack is a predator.”

Freeman conducted secret conversations with his victim on the social media platform Kik, which quickly turned sexual when the student confessed that he and his friends would take silly photos of each other using the social media platform Snapchat and use the in-app function to draw penises’ on each other.

The victim’s mother said the community turned on her, calling her “the crazy mum” after Freeman resigned and his initial offending remained unreported to the public.

“He knew how to win over mums and dads alike,” she said.

Freeman offended again earlier this year, after targeting a student being bullied, bringing his sickening offending to light.

He had messaged the victim back and forth, including messages where he covertly asked the victim if he masturbates when he’s home alone.

The court heard the first victim’s mother had been “watching and waiting” for Freeman to slip up “for years”.

“I became consumed by horror of what could happen to other children through his tutoring guise,” she said.

“I’m sad to say I felt relieved when I heard he’d done it again, I was right all along.”

In court on Friday, Magistrate Patrick Southey sentenced Freeman saying his offending was “serious, sinister and predatory”.

Freeman was placed on thesex offenders registry for 15 years and was also slapped with a two-year Community Corrections Order.