‘One of many children’: Shock as judge lets Australian pedophile walk free
Australia’s soft stance on serial sex offenders has made global headlines after a convicted pedophile was allowed to walk free.
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EXCLUSIVE
Australia’s soft stance on serial sex offenders has made international headlines after a convicted pedophile who abused multiple children across the 80s and 90s was allowed to walk free from a Victorian court without serving a single night behind bars.
Gary Bloom, a primary school teacher who preyed upon neighbourhood children in the 80s and 90s, was found guilty in 2023 of committing multiple penetrative sexual acts against a 10-year-old boy, who he met at a neighbourhood park.
By today’s standards, those penetrative acts would be considered rape, but at the time they were labelled “indecent assaults”.
Bloom was arrested in 2021 when he returned to Australia after living in Scotland for many years. He was facing up to 15 years jail, but in 2023, Judge Robyn Harper handed down a wholly suspended sentence, meaning Bloom would not see the inside of a cell.
Shortly after, Bloom lawfully flew back to Scotland where he continues to run a family bed and breakfast.
Judge Harper’s soft sentence has sparked international outrage, making front-page news across the UK.
Now, Stewart Carter, who was the 10-year-old boy Bloom abused, is speaking out as part of news.com.au’s exclusive Take The Stand campaign.
“I’ve had more justice through Scotland’s Daily Record and the Mirror in England than through our courts here in Victoria,” said Stewart, in an interview with news.com.au.
“He has faced greater scrutiny and been held to account more by the UK media.”
Stewart, now 50, has waived his right to anonymity to speak out candidly against child sexual abuse and lenient sentences for pedophiles.
He is calling for the elimination of suspended sentences across Australia in cases where adults are found guilty of sex offences against minors.
Stewart’s call is in line with a recommendation from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and NSW has already abolished suspended sentences in these circumstances.
But Victoria and other states are lagging behind.
“Every person I speak to says they agree that suspended sentences in these cases should be abolished. There is a reasonable assumption from the community that once convicted, these offenders will go to jail,” Stewart said.
“They are shocked when they learn about my case, and how common these sentencing outcomes are.”
Last week, news.com.au published damning new data which reveals that between 2010-11 and 2019-20, around one in two convicted sex offenders received a non-custodial sentence for their crime.
Stewart has met with the Victorian Government, but says momentum has since stalled.
“If I were a celebrity survivor, if I had a public profile, or had more of a platform the government would have responded by now,” he said.
‘One of many’: Shocking phone call that changed everything
The married father and former army officer first reported the sexual assaults to police in August 2019. In May 2020, he agreed to conduct a pretext phone call with the offender while police recorded the conversation.
“We spoke for about an hour and a half. I asked ‘why me?’ Gary said he couldn’t remember me specifically, but that the abuse I described was consistent with what he was doing at the time,” he said.
“He confessed to there being other victims. I was one of many children, all boys he’d abused during that time, too many to remember each one clearly.”
In court last year, Judge Harper said that in 1985, every couple of days, Bloom would frequent a local neighbourhood field, where children gathered to ride bikes and play in a cubby house they had built.
According to the judge, Bloom “ingratiated himself” with the children, and was “friendly and showed interest in them”.
“You would sit with [Stewart] and his friends in the cubby house, talking to them about sex and showing them pornographic magazines,” said Judge Harper.
Then one day in 1985, Bloom approached 10-year-old Stewart, asking him to follow Bloom to an area on the other side of some thick trees. There, he showed Stewart pornography before repeatedly sexually assaulting him.
Terrified, Stewart told Bloom that his mum would be worried and was expecting him. He began struggling and broke free.
“I can see it as if it were happening in front of me in technicolour. His demeanour changed from soft and kind to firm and assertive and I thought, ‘I’m going to die’,” he said.
Bloom was a children’s swimming coach and a teacher working at Sacred Heart Primary School in Diamond Creek at the time.
After the assaults, Bloom repeatedly threatened Stewart not to tell anyone.
In an emotional victim impact statement read to the court, Stewart said that “despite [Bloom’s] threats, I eventually told someone at school about what had happened”.
“Unfortunately, as kids do, that person told other kids and of course the gossip spread. My life at school quickly descended into a maelstrom of hateful noise. Kids teased me mercilessly about being ‘your boyfriend’, they joked about things you did to me. There was no compassion, no care, I was tainted, different. You caused that,” he said, while sitting in the dock looking directly at Bloom.
Almost four decades passed by. After Stewart became a father, and his own professional role exposed him to other stories of child abuse, he decided he would report to authorities.
He had no idea that in the intervening years, two other children had already come forward. Both had been abused by Bloom in the 1990s.
“I reported to police in August 2019. I wanted him to be held accountable for what he had done to me. I wanted to matter and be heard,” Stewart said.
“Instead, Bloom was allowed to walk free from court with a wholly suspended sentence and now lives in Scotland lawfully, with no reporting obligations, no impact on his life, and no accountability.
“The judge had the prerogative to send him away for up to 15 years but didn’t. He was still considered a moderate risk of recidivism. He was a known sex offender, who pleaded guilty to multiple counts of child sex offending – penetrative assaults. The judge had questions about his acceptance of guilt and remorse, and it was [a] crime which by contemporary standards would be rape.
“But she didn’t require him to serve even a single hour of community service or pay a fine, either. He was home in Scotland in time for Christmas.”
Stewart says that the outcome and the court process itself has produced a fresh trauma of its own.
“I was naive to the price I’d have to pay. I set my life on fire. The experience of giving statements, having to sit with and recall the detail of [his] abuse in minutiae to police, the waiting and uncertainty of the investigation spanning years …[it has had a] shattering impact on my mental health,” he said.
Bloom’s barrister claimed Bloom was merely “experimenting with his sexuality” when he abused Stewart.
“I’ve figuratively poured petrol on myself and set my life on fire just to watch him walk from court … Is this what the community expects? Child sexual offenders spending no time in jail?” he asked.
Afterwards, Stewart tried to contact the OPP solicitor.
“I thought surely there must be grounds to appeal the leniency of the sentence. But I was put in my box and told that just because I’m not satisfied with the outcome, other survivors would be very happy,” he said.
“I was repeatedly told in a sense to be grateful for having had an opportunity to tell my story. [As if] having the opportunity to stand up in court and spill my guts was enough, and that the outcome is irrelevant. But the outcome is everything. It’s absolutely everything.”
Then, in January this year, Stewart got a devastating phone call.
A routine review of judgments had found that a “clerical error” had been made in his matter.
The judge had miscalculated the weight of the previous convictions Bloom had received, failing to take into account that offending against one of his victims in the 1990s had been a “category one” offence – the very worst kind.
Had that been factored in at sentencing during Stewart’s matter, Bloom would automatically have been put on the sex offender registry for life.
He would not have been able to avoid jail.
Stewart asked if anything could be done about the error, but since the matter was closed and Bloom had left the country, the caller told Stewart it was best “to try not to think about it”.
That was not the only “clerical error”.
On reading the sentencing remarks, news.com.au discovered other “clerical errors”, including Bloom’s age being wrong by a decade and two different ages given for Bloom in the same document.
“Not only did they not manage to correctly classify the gravity of Bloom’s offending, they couldn’t even get his age right. These are such simple pieces of information,” said Stewart.
“It erodes any confidence or trust I have in the judicial process. If they can’t get his age right, and can’t even use a consistent age in this document, how can I feel sure and trust the judge applied the right consideration throughout the rest?
Stewart says his experience would be a “comedy of errors” but for the fact we are talking about the abuse of children.
Now Stewart is determined to make change.
For the last 12 months he has worked with the Shadow Attorney-General, Michael O’Brien, and the Victorian state opposition to develop a Private Member’s Bill (Sentencing Amendment, Sentencing Practices for Child Sexual Offences Bill 2024) which would bring Victorian legislation into alignment with NSW – thereby closing the suspended sentencing loophole.
So far he has collected more than 10,000 signatures on a petition in support of the reform.
“The Bill is as straightforward as a Bill can be,” says Stewart.
“It’s deliberately narrow, with a sharp focus on scrapping suspended sentences for convicted child sex offenders. It has been careful to avoid unintended consequences.”
Stewart met with the Victorian Attorney-General, Jacyln Symes, and felt cautiously optimistic but says that since then, the “department have taken to ghosting me”.
“I want the weight of public opinion to fall on Jacinta Allen. For over 12 months, I made offers to work with the government on this in good faith. If I was a celebrity survivor, or had friends who were a celebrity … or if I was related to someone in the political system, this would have been done by now,” he said.
“But why does rape against me matter less? Why do I matter less?”
Stewart joins Take The Stand
Today, Stewart is joining news.com.au’s Take the Stand campaign, and is throwing his full weight behind the call for specialist judges, more funding for court support dogs and long haul support for survivors.
“I think the court support dog program is a fantastic initiative. I wish I had been aware of it before going through court last year,” he said.
“The calmness and support that a dog is able to bring – it’s immeasurable. Personally, time with my two dogs, Buckley and Violet, is where I feel safest and most calm.
“I have a smart watch and can measure when I am with my two dogs. If I have been triggered or am feeling troubled, all my vital signs calm once I am with them.
“So can you imagine the benefits for a victim-survivor going into a stressful scenario like court, and how having a labrador could make a difference? It just rounds the sharp edges.”
Since the court case concluded, Stewart has rediscovered his love of running. This week he will complete his first 100km ultra-marathon.
Running helps his mental health, but Stewart feels there needs to be much better long-term support for victim-survivors and a recognition that when the trial or court case ends, the trauma doesn’t.
“I struggle working full time now,” he says.
“It’s had an impact which has manifested in the last four years, and that has eroded my earning capacity and ability to work like I used to.
“I have no access to income support and am not eligible for disability support.”
Despite being abused by a schoolteacher, Stewart is also not eligible for the National Redress Scheme or other support aimed at victims abused in institutional settings, due to the fact he attended a different school.
“Compensation available to victim-survivors outside of an institutional setting is less than negligible,” said Stewart.
At present, Stewart receives counselling rebates to assist with his psychology bills, but periodically, he is required to jump through “humiliating” reapplication hoops where he feels he must “prove [his] trauma and re-litigate [his] deservedness to access support and counselling”, knowing that at any moment, he might be cut off.
He considers it a callous bureaucracy, and with hindsight, says that while he came forward to authorities to protect the community, the personal cost he has paid for doing so has not been justifiable.
“I seem to have navigated a path of least support possible,” says Stewart.
He is strongly supportive of Take The Stand’s call for government investment in “long haul support” for all survivors, and hopes male survivors receive more tailored assistance.
“Children are children and deserve the same protections and interventions regardless. A little boy’s life matters as much as a little girl’s life,” he said.
“Mine shouldn’t matter less because I was a little boy outside of an institutional setting. But it does. The reality is that it does.
“But I still matter.”
Nina Funnell is Walkley Award winning journalist and the creator of the Take the Stand campaign run in exclusive partnership with news.com.au. Contact: ninafunnell@gmail.com
Originally published as ‘One of many children’: Shock as judge lets Australian pedophile walk free
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