Teacher Steven Mellody pleads guilty to grooming, sexual assault

A Christian college teacher broke into the school library after-hours to sexually assault a student, and on another occasion took her back to his family home.

The teacher pleaded guilty to a dozen charges of grooming and sexual assault of students at a Melbourne Christian school.

A teacher at a Melbourne Christian college preyed on two female students, sexually assaulting them on and off school grounds.

Sickening details of the extent of Steven Mellody’s crimes were revealed as he pleaded guilty to six charges relating to dozens of incidents of grooming, sexual assault, sexual penetration and persistent sexual child abuse in the County Court on Friday.

Mellody, 39, abused his position as a physical education and VCE psychology teacher at St Andrews Christian College in Wantirna South, befriending the teenage girls and sending them messages of a sexual nature about what he wanted to do to them.

“I want to take you on a car ride in that dress,” he texted one of his victims.

“I want to touch your body all over. I want to feel your waist and your bum.”

In another message he wrote: “I wish I could be inside you.”

Sexual acts took place during school hours in his office, the gymnasium and the wellbeing room, and also on school excursions and an annual college ski camp in Falls Creek where the students were under Mellody’s supervision.

He also sexually assaulted his victims in his car and at his Ringwood North home, which he shared with his wife and young child.

Steven Mellody abused his position as a PE teacher at St Andrews Christian College in Wantirna South.

During the pandemic, when all students were learning remotely from home, he insisted his victim wear her school uniform when she snuck out to meet him at night.

He then took her to the school where he broke into the library at almost 10 o’clock at night, disarming the alarm, before committing sexual acts.

Mellody had to rush to a chemist to get one of his victim’s the morning after pill after a sexual encounter where he did not use protection.

The married father of one’s deviant ways saw him bend one of the girls over in his office where he pulled her leggings down and “dry humped against her buttocks”.

He even made her accept a call from her mother while he continued the disturbing act.

During school holidays, Mellody picked up one student from Knox City shopping centre and took her back to his home where he sexually assaulted her.

He made her switch her phone to flight mode in case her mother tried to track her.

Mellody even complained she had left hair in his bed while he tried to remove the strands from the sheets.

On another occasion when he had the girl at his home, he made her hide in the closet when the doorbell rang.

The hearing will continue in May when the prosecution and defence barrister Paul Holdenson, KC, will make submissions on an appropriate punishment.

Judge Frank Gucciardo will then sentence him at a later date.