Wellington College, Haileybury teacher Richard Ho sacked for grooming students
A disgraced Melbourne teacher sent a flurry of lewd messages to two students, asking them if they watched porn, sending nudes and even offering to go shopping for lingerie.
South East
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A grub teacher busted with nearly 100 child abuse videos groomed two students by exchanging lewd messages about their sexual preferences and offered to go shopping for lingerie.
Details of Richard Skalova Ho’s offending can now be revealed after the disgraced teacher pleaded guilty to charges of possessing and transmitting child abuse material.
Court documents state Ho offended against two girls at Wellington Secondary College in Mulgrave where he worked in the late 2010s.
He then joined Haileybury college which stood him down from all duties in March 2022 after learning of the police investigation and banned him from approaching college campuses and students.
The elite private school kicked him out once charges were laid five months later.
Ho’s initial exchange of messages and photos with the two girls on Instagram, Snapchat and Wickr were about their pets. It then progressed to him asking them in text messages to play a game of 21 questions of a sexual nature.
He asked them if they would have threesomes, whether they sent nudes and “how far” they had gone with guys.
Ho asked one of the girls if she masturbated and another the size of her breasts. When she replied “not big”, he told her “good things come in small packages” and told her he would take her lingerie shopping.
Ho told them they could “do better” in response to the girls saying they liked particular boys in school.
In one of the messages, he told one of the girls he was in the shower and asked for a photo of her face. When she declined, Ho sent her a photo of himself in the shower with his upper body exposed.
On March 17, 2022 executed a search warrant at his Springvale South home and found 93 videos of child abuse material on his phone.
His lawyer Esan Pilai asked the County Court on Thursday when the case was called for mention for an adjournment so Ho could see a psychologist.
Ho is back in court on October 10 for a plea hearing.
Ho’s teaching registration was suspended in September 2022.
