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When Stewart Carter walked into the Eltham police station to report the man who sexually abused him as a child, he never imagined the primary school teacher would later walk free without ever serving a day in jail.

Sitting in the second row of the County Court of Victoria, with his head bowed, Carter broke down as a judge revealed the man seated metres away in the dock with a bag packed at his knee – Gary Bloom – would walk with a three-year jail sentence, wholly suspended.

Stewart Carter is a survivor of child sex abuse at the hands of a teacher.Credit: Jason South

“I wanted to scream out, but I couldn’t. I’d poured petrol on myself and basically set my life on fire all to watch him walk from court,” Carter, 49, recalls.

“It took me days to process. I felt like nothing more than a file number.

“Is this what the community expects? Child sexual offenders spending no time in jail?”

It would be the beginning, he says, of a stark lesson in the realities of the justice system.

Carter gave permission for The Age to remove the cloak of anonymity the law gives to child sex abuse victims. He allowed us to publicly identify him because he wants to change the law and stop historical child sex abuse offenders receiving wholly suspended jail sentences.

He also wants to close a little-known loophole that allows some convicted child molesters to leave the country without ever notifying police overseas of their risks to the community.

Carter said some child sex abuse victims are falling through the cracks in cases which don’t involve attention-grabbing institutions such as the AFL or Catholic Church.

“If my abuser had been charged under what the crime is today, he would’ve been staring at about eight years in custody. He walked from court without spending a day in prison,” Carter said.

“He now has unfettered access to children in Scotland where he runs a bed and breakfast with his former wife.”

Stewart Carter wants the law changed so historical child sex abuse offenders can’t receive wholly suspended jail sentences.Credit: Jason South

There were 2294 charges laid for sexual offences against children in the year to July 2023, the second highest in more than a decade, data from the Crime Statistics Agency shows.

Statistically, it’s recognised it can take decades, and often longer, for men to report childhood sexual abuse to the authorities.

In 2019, more than 2000 Australians reported for the first time incidents of sexual abuse to police – incidents that had occurred more than 20 years earlier.

Of those, half had occurred to children when they were aged under 10.

One in three women and one in five men are estimated to experience child sexual abuse by the time they’re 18.

“This needs to be reflected in sentencing given the known delay in reporting,” Carter said.

“In the 1980s it wasn’t possible for a male to be charged with raping another male, there was not a charge then, so people were charged with offences such as indecent assault and not the sexual penetration of a child which is the charge we see today.

“The changes I am proposing to sentencing of historical offences have already been made in NSW, in 2018.”

THE NSW LAW CHANGE

Last year, the NSW government changed the law around the sentencing of historical crimes to reflect current sentencing standards.

The then NSW attorney general Mark Speakman said the changes were implemented to ensure the courts apply contemporary sentencing practices, regardless of the nature of the crime or when it was committed.

It was an expansion of 2018 reforms that ensured child sex offenders would be sentenced according to contemporary practices, as recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

But the law is very different in Victoria.

In 1985, Bloom was working as a teacher at Sacred Heart Primary School in Diamond Creek, in Melbourne’s north-east, and as a swimming coach, when he began visiting a paddock near Carter’s home, where children were known to frequent.

Carter said that while Bloom was not his teacher at the time of the offending, living with the knowledge that someone in a position of trust in the community had taken advantage of him added to his trauma.

Carter said it wasn’t an easy task to report Bloom to the police. In fact, it took him more than 30 years to do so. Then COVID-19 hit.

“The police waited until he [Bloom] returned to Australia in December 2021 where he was arrested after completing home quarantine. He was later bailed and allowed to return to Scotland for work.

“In the phone call we recorded, he said he had been found guilty without conviction for similar offending on two other boys in 1992 while he was a teacher. He said he couldn’t remember me, but what he did was consistent with what he was doing at the time,” Carter said.

In the 1980s in Victoria, the charge of indecent assault could include anything from flashing to abusing a child.

More recently, there is now a specific offence for the sexual penetration of children aged under 12. The standard sentence for that offence is 10 years’ and a maximum sentence of 25 years’ jail.

THE SENTENCING ISSUES

A change in sentencing principles means different minimum sentences can apply to a person who commits a crime today when compared with historical crimes.

From 2011 to 2014, the Sentencing Advisory Council reported suspended sentences were phased out in Victoria and can only now be applied to historical offending that occurred before this time.

Data from the County Court of Victoria shows there were 32 people convicted of child sex related offences between 2018 and 2022.

Of those, two resulted in wholly suspended sentences and a further 27 were jailed with an average sentence of about seven years.

On October 6, Bloom, now 58, walked from court with a three year wholly suspended sentence after pleading guilty. He avoided spending a single day in prison.

“If you’ve been charged with a crime like Gary back in 1985 and the offence satisfies the current threshold under the current offence of sexual penetration of a child under 12, you should be sentenced accordingly,” Carter said.

“Societally, was child abuse different in 1985?”

GARY BLOOM

Bloom is one of a growing list of former Victorian teachers to be charged with historic child sex abuse.

He joins the ranks of other child molesters who were teachers including Malka Leifer, Steven Ronald Mellody, David Carnie, Brian Kenneth William Wallwork, Damien Woods, John McMillan, Graeme Harder, Monique Frances Ooms and Luke Joseph Martin – all sentenced in recent years.

A number of others accused offenders remain before the courts.

Former teacher Gary Bloom leaves the County Court last month.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Liberal party member for the North-Eastern Metropolitan region Nick McGowan said the outcome of Carter’s case was somewhat frightening and feared it may see other victims, particularly men, avoid coming forward if they feel their efforts will amount to an offender simply walking out of court

“I am greatly concerned by a system which increasingly appears to prioritise an offender’s supposed good behaviour since offending, over the need for justice to contain an appropriate punishment for crimes against children,” McGowan said.

A Victorian government spokesperson acknowledged the impacts of sexual violence on victims could be profound and often have lasting consequences.

“We know the re-traumatising effect seeking justice can have on sexual assault victim-survivors – that’s why we’re continuing to improve how the justice system deals with sexual violence,” they said.

Carter reported his abuse to police in 2019. Bloom – by then living overseas – was charged and released on bail during a trip back to Australia in December 2021.

Ever since though, Carter said he’s been forced to grapple with crude comments from adults with one person at his workplace even suggesting he was lucky Carter himself didn’t grow into a sex offender.

“We should be encouraging people to speak up. We must learn to live with the uncomfortable. Because people like Gary hope that the uncomfortableness keeps people like me quiet,” he said.

For support call Kidshelpline 1800 55 1800, Lifeline 131 114

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