Elite school staffer assaulted in jail: court

A former IT employee at a prestigious girls school has been sexually abused twice since he was jailed for possessing hundreds of items of child abuse material which depicted girls as young as 10 years old, a court has heard.

Michael Thomas Mowbray appeared via audiovisual link in the NSW District Court on Thursday to launch an appeal against the severity of his 18-month prison sentence.

He wore a prison-issued green T-shirt and a concerned expression as his lawyer George Costantine revealed the 30-year-old had been sexually assaulted twice since being jailed last month.

Mr Costantine said the first attack occurred last week when a fellow inmate “grabbed (Mowbray) by the penis” and caused a “significant traumatic experience”.

The former IT worker was sexually assaulted in the same manner while waiting to appear virtually in court on Thursday, the court was told.

“He is now in protective custody because of that first sexual assault,” Mr Costantine said.

He argued the safety concerns for his client weighed in favour of a more lenient sentence which could be served in the community.

Mowbray was jailed in February after he admitted to possessing 198 images and 103 videos of the shocking child abuse material depicting girls between the ages of 10 and 15.

He had been working as an IT officer at North Sydney Girls High School around the time he was charged with possession of the graphic illicit material in November 2022.

Mr Costantine noted his client had sought psychological treatment only days after being charged by police.

“This is an extraordinary example of rehabilitation in the community,” he said.

In contrast to similar offenders who “often struggled” to accept their role in child abuse offences, Mr Costantine said Mowbray had attended 17 sessions with a psychologist before he was jailed.

However, crown prosecutor Diana Paterson contended the 30-year-old appeared to be “downgrading” his offending “to being no more than an accident” to one psychologist he saw.

While she did not address the sexual assaults in custody, Ms Paterson said Mowbray’s mental and physical discomfort was “no more significant” than that of anyone else in jail for the first time.

She maintained the sentence of full time imprisonment was appropriate.

Judge Christopher O’Brien agreed a community-based sentence was “never going to be appropriate” for the offences, which he said were “simply too serious” for anything other than jail.

“This offending is not victimless,” he said.

“The victims … are the children who are depicted in both the images and the videos.”

The judge said it was important to send a message to the community that those who are involved with child abuse material will “almost certainly face jail time”.

He accepted Mowbray’s time in custody had “not been without its difficulties” and the sexual assaults “have been a matter of some trauma for him”.

However, Judge O’Brien rejected Mr Costantine’s claim his client’s jail sentence had been compounded by a “level of provocation and incitement” in the media coverage of Mowbray’s crimes.

He found Mowbray’s efforts to rehabilitate himself before he was incarcerated were “to his credit” and decided to factor in a 25 per cent discount for his early plea of guilty, which assisted in the speedy administration of justice.

Judge O’Brien upheld the appeal and resentenced Mowbray to 14 months imprisonment with a non parole period of seven months.

The former IT worker will be eligible for release in September.

During his sentencing, the court heard he used the search term “teen jailbait” to find hundreds of child abuse images and videos.

After searching for the images on the dark web using the TOR browser, he uploaded select images to his OneDrive account, which he accessed on his work computer at the school.

The remainder of the 198 images and 103 videos were located on his bedroom computer and on a four terabyte encrypted hard drive.

The court was told Mowbray named one of the files “extreme teenie video collection” and another folder “shy British amateur teens home alone f**k yay”.

The 30-year-old was busted while he was working as an IT support specialist for the prestigious school, working out of a “help desk office” in the library.

The court was told he had a password protected computer at the school which was accessed by a new administrator, who found the folder in Mowbray’s personal OneDrive account.

The principal was notified and contacted police immediately.

Mowbray’s employment at the school ended shortly before his arrest, with a source revealing staff were asked to hand in their school-issued laptops to the IT department.

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