Gary Bloom: Former Sacred Heart Primary School teacher faces County Court for child abuse

A former Diamond Creek teacher has been unmasked as a vile pedophile who sexually assaulted a young boy after showing him a pornographic magazine.

Gary Bloom received a suspended three year sentence in the County Court for his offending.

A former Melbourne primary school teacher who showed a young boy a porn magazine before forcing him to carry out sex acts to “experiment his sexuality and sexual identity “ has escaped jail.

Gary Bloom received a suspended sentence of three years in the County Court on Friday and was placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for 15 years, having earlier pleaded guilty to three counts of indecent assault.

Bloom, now 68, committed the offences in 1985 when he was between 20 and 21 and worked at the Sacred Heart Primary School in Diamond Creek.

His victim was then aged between 11 and 12 and attended a different school.

Bloom, a father-of-two, worked at the school until 1992 then returned to study science and geology before working as a geologist in Australia and internationally.

He moved his family to Scotland for an initial period of two years but decided to stay and work as a geologist.

Bloom sexually abused the boy in a secluded grassed area near the victim’s home where there was a vacant block and a fenced horse paddock where the victim and his friends used to play.

Bloom was friendly and showed interest in what they did. On occasions, he would sit with them in a “cubby house” the boys built under pine trees and tell them stories about sex. He also showed them porn magazines and commented on the photos.

On the day of the offending, Bloom produced a porn magazine and asked the boy if he enjoyed looking at the photos. He then forced the boy to perform a sex act on him and digitally raped him.

“The victim felt as though he was going to die and he knew that he was in danger. The victim again told Mr Bloom to stop and said that his mum would be wondering where he was and would be looking for him,” Judge Robyn Harper said, reading from the prosecution summary document.

Not long after the offending, Bloom saw the victim on the street and told him not to be silly and not to tell anybody what happened.

The victim told his parents and reported the matter at Eltham police station — 37 years later — on August 25, 2019.

During a call with the victim which was part of the police investigation, Bloom made partial admission and made excuses about his behaviour, saying “I don’t have any memory anymore, I had a breakdown.”

He further said, “My home life was really, really horrific and some of my actions were an expression of that. There were acts in his teenage years that were bad, and that they were expressions of sexuality, sexual identity that I was totally confused with.”

Bloom returned to Australia in December 2021 and was arrested.

Judge Harper said sexual offending against children was of the utmost gravity.

“You were experimenting with your sexuality. One does not experiment with a young, vulnerable and protesting child. This was criminal offending, not an experimentation,” Judge Harper said.

The victim’ struggled with relationships, trust and intimacy as a result of Bloom’s action, Judge Harper said.

The Judge said had Bloom not pleaded guilty, she would have imposed a sentence of three years and six months in prison, with a non-parole period of 18 months.