Sex offenders Victoria: Scott Denham, Michelle Grant teacher, Michael Tracey jailed 2024: Court
Modern sex grubs aren’t just hiding in the bushes they can be a neighbour, colleague, local dad or even a teacher. Here are some of Victoria’s worst to go down in 2024.
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Most modern day child sex fiends aren’t hiding in the bushes or driving around in vans.
They are deviant dads or even your work colleague and sometimes trusted teachers.
The following depraved sex sickos are among Victoria’s worst to get their comeuppance this year.
SICKO SEX GROUP FIEND
Victorian agriculture worker Nicholas Boers was busted as part of a vile online network that shared child abuse material.
Boers told fellow sickos he had “no limits” when it came to sharing and distributing child abuse material.
A father of three children under the age of 13, Boers used encrypted messaging services such as Kik Messenger and Tumblr to publish and distribute the material to other users.
The Waranga Shores man was sentenced to two years and six months in prison by Judge Peter Rozen.
MONSTER CHILD PREDATOR
Cobram child molester Scott Denham sexually assaulted three girls during 14-years of vile offending.
He abused them in the rural towns of Cobram, Streatham, Wendouree and Donald.
In one instance, Denham touched one of his victim’s vaginas as she attempted to get out from the table at the Cobram Hotel.
In another, Denham placed strawberry topping on his penis before forcing his victim to lick it off.
One of the victims said Denham was “very persuasive” and that if she did not do as he asked, it would feel like “punishment”.
Denham was found guilty by a jury at the Shepparton County Court after he pleaded his innocence.
Denham will serve at least eight and a half years behind bars for his sickening crimes.
SEX DEVIANT TEACHER
Former Melbourne Catholic girls school art teacher Michelle Grant sexually abused a student — including drawing her nude in a Titanic-style erotic act — during a protracted period of depraved torment.
Grant, a former veteran St Columba’s College Essendon teacher, groomed and sexually violated a student in the early 1990s.
Grant, who taught art and textiles at the Essendon Catholic school from the 1980s until she was fired in 2022, targeted the 14-year-old victim and “intimacy grew”.
The court heard Grant groomed and wrote the victim letters telling her she “loved her”.
Judge Gregory Lyon said Grant committed “repugnant” and “utterly unconscionable” acts. “(The) sustained grooming and complex infiltration of the victim’s friends, family and her perception of herself … (left the victim suffering) real, deep and lifelong harm,” Judge Lyon said.
Grant, 62, was sentenced at the County Court in July to six months behind bars after pleading guilty to sexual penetration of a child under care, supervision or authority.
FAMILY MAN FIEND
Malvern East “family man” Matthew Hickey was exposed for grooming two teenage girls while away for work from his wife and kids.
The court heard the “loving father” had moved to Kerang to work at Kerfab Industries where, isolated from his family, he started to drink heavily.
Hickey started “intimately messaged” the two children on Instagram, offering them cash in exchange for nude images because he was “bored, lonely and unhappy”, his barrister told the court.
The court heard Hickey received sexual images from the children and sent one of the girls a video of himself masturbating.
During the messaging Hickey described to one teen having a wife and children and stated he enjoyed speaking to a 15-year-old, sending her $400 over a number of months for the child abuse material.
Hickey told the other teen, who had made “multiple references about being school age” that she was “old enough”, offering her $200 to meet up for sex, saying: “I will f--k you slowly”, and putting the cash in her letterbox.
Hickey, 51, was jailed at the County Court for two years and three months after pleading guilty to grooming two teenage girls for child abuse material and sex with cash.
Hickey was placed on the sex offenders register for life and given a non-parole period of one year and three months and will be eligible for release on August 25, 2025.
CHILD SEX PREDATOR
Maryborough sex fiend Patrick Matthews whose grub chat group moniker was “under 18 only” was exposed secretly filming two young girls in the shower.
The court heard police raided Mathews’ home and workplace in Maryborough after an investigation found he was part of a sicko chat group that shared child sexual exploitation videos using a moniker that included the phrase “under 18 only”.
Police seized Mathews’ phone and found he had been filming two young girls in the shower for a number of months in 2022.
The grub was then busted again in June and July of 2023 possessing disgusting videos of child sexual exploitation.
Judge Amanda Chambers described Mathews’ “appalling predatory behaviour” as an “egregious breach of trust” that had left a “devastating impact” on “every aspect” of his victims’ lives.
Mathews, 51, of Maryborough, was jailed at the County Court for two years with 14 months non-parole after pleading guilty producing child abuse material.
BRUTAL SCISSOR RAPIST
Heinous Gippsland rapist Patrick McDonald-O’Dwyer strangled and threatened to kill a young woman he tortured with cigarette burns and sexually assaulted with scissors.
McDonald-O’Dwyer forced his victim into a living nightmare after luring the young woman via dating site Plenty of Fish.
The vile fiend grabbed the victim’s throat and squeezed and ordered she call him “master”.
The victim, who was struggling to breathe, relented to McDonald-O’Dwyer’s sickening demands.
McDonald-O’Dwyer later raped the victim after he threatened her to “do as you’re told, or I’ll f--king kill you”.
McDonald-O’Dwyer, 32, was sentenced in the County Court to a minimum five-year and three-month jail term after pleading guilty to multiple brutal rape charges.
COSPLAY NERD GRUB
Shepparton childcare cosplayer and Sesame Street fanboy Michael Tracey paid up to $5000 to view vile child abuse material to “relieve himself”. Tracey, who lived with his mum, was nabbed at his Shepparton East home following a multinational police investigation on March 10 last year.
Tracey was nabbed after the Joint Anti Child Exploitation Team received a tip from the US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
Investigators seized multiple devices including mobile phones and external hard drives.
Police who examined the devices discovered Tracey’s lewd history and horde of grubby child abuse material.
Tracey downloaded sickening images and videos from vile websites including one where the sex fiend was a premium member.
Tracey, 26, was sentenced in the County Court to 10 months behind bars after pleading guilty to access and possess child abuse material.
DEPRAVED PLAYSTATION GRUB
“Depraved” former Nestle factory worker Mark Vinden was busted sexually assaulting a child while she was playing a video game, while he was later caught with a stash of child abuse material.
Vinden, 53, was jailed three years and nine months for sexually assaulting a child under the age of 16 and for accessing and possessing child abuse material obtained via a carriage service.
On March 24, 2022, Vinden and the girl played PlayStation together, with Vinden sitting on the couch while his victim was on a recliner chair.
Vinden then approached the young girl on the chair, put his hands down her school dress and began to rub the outside of her vagina.
The girl asked Vinden to stop, which he did, before she went home to her mother in a state of shock.
Vinden also came to the attention of police through an investigation into the encrypted cloud storage website mega.nz, a site commonly used among sex offenders to transmit child abuse material.
The court heard Vinden accessed 449 child abuse material files, including videos as long as 41 minutes between April 24, 2023 and May 10, 2023. On May 10, 2023, police executed a search warrant at Vinden’s address in relation to the child abuse material.
Vinden, who grew up in Broadford and Seymour, will have to serve at least two years and six months in prison before being eligible for parole.
Former promising footballer sets fire to mum’s house
A once professional Victorian soccer-star-turned-ice-addict torched his mum’s Sydenham house after seeing demons and hearing voices from “high powers”.
Drink-driver to be deported after string of offences
An unlicensed drink-driver is set to be deported after a series of unlicensed drink-driving offences.