Hey Dad! star Sarah Monahan ‘numb’ over A Current Affair reporter Ben McCormack’s plea

FORMER Hey Dad! star and abuse survivor Sarah Monahan says she feels “numb” after the reporter she trusted pleaded guilty to child porn charges.

FORMER child star and abuse survivor Sarah Monahan has expressed her disappointment in former A Current Affair reporter Ben McCormack who yesterday pleaded guilty to child porn charges.

The Hey Dad! actor had worked closely with McCormack throughout A Current Affair’s investigation into her abuser, the series’ lead actor Robert Hughes.

McCormack was the lead reporter in the program’s investigation which led to the convicted paedophile’s arrest.

The Nine star, who resigned from the network after he was sensationally arrested by the same police sex crime unit that was investigating Hughes, yesterday admitted to two counts of using a carriage service to transmit child pornography.

Actor Sarah Monahan in Sydney. Picture: Dylan Robinson

On Instagram, Ms Monahan said she was in “total disbelief” after McCormack’s shock plea.

“I had hoped there was a better explanation. Maybe he was doing research for a story. Maybe it was taken out of context,” she wrote.

“Then reading the news this morning, I understood what friends of Robert’s must have felt like. “That total disbelief that someone could have such a double life. That you could be so easily fooled into believing someone was a decent person.

“The total disappointment, in them, for their actions, and in yourself, for letting this person into your world. Sad that the journey you went through together was a lie.”

McCormack tracked down paedophile Robert Hughes in Singapore while he was being investigated by the same police sex crimes unit that charged the reporter.

Cast of TV show Hey Dad, including Robert Hughes and Sarah Monahan.

Ms Monahan said she felt “anger that you allowed this person into your home”, and experienced “the wonder of what they were thinking when they were relaying the guilty verdict to you, live from court”.

The child protection advocate said she was “pretty numb” and offered “hugs” to everyone who felt the same.

McCormack is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to two child porn charges.

Court documents made available after his plea revealed the 43-year-old didn’t believe he could escape his attraction to small boys because they were too “beautiful”.

The former star reporter has resigned from the network and will be sentenced next week.

Conversations between McCormack and another man discovered by police on a social networking sight saw the star reporter confess he favoured boys as young as seven because they had “perfect bodies” and was a “proud pedo, proud b lover”.

The agreed facts state police never found any videos or photos of child pornography transmitted by McCormack — but the conversations showed the men exchanged images.

His solicitor Sam Macedone told reporters that McCormack did not trade any images of children and insisted the charges related to nothing more than “fantasy talk”.

“I just wanted to make it quite clear that there were never any images that were traded between Ben and anyone else of any child exploitation material. It was nothing more than fantasy talk, but no transporting of images,” he told reporters.

McCormack was remanded on bail to be sentenced next Friday, October 6 at the Sydney District Court.