Toowoomba teacher denies porn chats with 14-year-old girl

The Crown case was that he had met the Scottish teenager online and they had exchanged sexually explicit photographs of themselves.

The trial before Judge Deborah Richards continues.

A Toowoomba primary school teacher accused of sending sexually explicit photographs of himself to a 14-year-old girl has pleaded not guilty to more than 30 charges.

Jarred Lee Wands is accused of striking up an online relationship with the girl from Scotland in May and June of 2016.

Crown prosecutor Nicole Friedewald told Toowoomba District Court it was the Crown case that the girl had told the 28-year-old that she was 14 on their first exchange.

The girl had sent a photograph of herself dressed in her school uniform which was displayed to the court.

Wands claimed he believed the girl was at least 16 and in her senior year at school, she said.

When police detectives from Taskforce Argos attended the Cambooya home of Wands and his wife the defendant told police his computer had been hacked a couple of months before.

Ms Friedewald said Wands had sent the girl a number of photographs of his exposed penis and had told the girl how to pleasure herself.

On his request, the girl had sent him a number of photographs of her breasts and vagina, she said.

When the girl’s mother found she had been conversing with a man on Google Hangouts, the teenager told her mother that the man was a 17-year-old from Edinburgh.

However, she soon told her mother that the person she’d been conversing with was a 20-year-old man from Australia who told her he was studying criminology, she said.

Initially, Wands had sent the girl a photograph of a man he had downloaded from internet claiming it was him, Ms Friedewald said.

Among the 35 charges that Wands has pleaded not guilty to, include using electronic communication to engage in sexual acts, possessing child exploitation material and exposing a child under 16 to an indecent act.

Ms Friedewald told the jury it was not expected that the defendant would deny having contact with the girl.

“The real issue is one of age,” she said.

The complainant girl had her evidence recorded which would be played to the jury while the girl’s mother and investigating police from Scotland would give evidence to the court via a video link from Scotland, Ms Friedewald told the jury in her opening address.

The court would sit into the evening to facilitate the taking of that evidence.

The trial before Judge Deborah Richards continues.