Teacher Brendan Cohen free on bail ahead of appeal
A MELBOURNE teacher who secretly filmed up the skirts of schoolgirls and their mothers during parent-teacher interviews has walked free from court after appealing his jail sentence.
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A NOW-banned high school teacher has been sentenced to five months’ jail for “upskirting” schoolgirls and their mothers during parent-teacher interviews.
But Brendan Cohen is free on bail after immediately appealing against the sentence.
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Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty to covertly filming up the skirts of pupils on the grounds of Bialik College and Mount Scopus Memorial College, and during parent-teacher interviews, between 2015 and 2017.
He also admitted to creating child pornography, photoshopping the faces of 36 children aged 11 to 17 onto adult pornographic images and a video.
An investigation began after a Bialik College network engineer discovered material on a hard drive bought and used by Cohen.
Police found more than 80 upskirting films during school searches in May.
Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg described what Cohen had done as “fundamentally wrong”.
He said on Tuesday he would have jailed Cohen for nine months but for his early guilty plea.
Cohen was also sentenced to serve a two-year Community Corrections Order following his release from jail.
During an earlier plea hearing in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, a lengthy apology from Cohen was read out.
That apology is now being circulated widely in the Jewish community and between his former pupils at the two schools.
Cohen had been a media teacher at Bialik for 15 years before moving to Mount Scopus in 2016.
Bialik College principal Jeremy Stowe-Lindner said “the whole community is appalled by Brendan Cohen’s breach of trust and sickening behaviour”.
“I acknowledge and applaud the dignity and bravery of the victims — at our school, at his next school, at the dance school, in shopping centres and in the wider community,” Rabbi Stowe-Lindner said.
In a victim impact statement earlier read out in court, one girl said she suffered disturbed sleep and anxiety.
Other victims told of feeling that their school years had been stolen from them.
Cohen, who has now been disqualified from teaching by the Victorian Institute of Teaching, is due to appear in the County Court for an appeal hearing on April 17.