Face of Nation : A Perth man who worked as a lollipop man and filmed himself sexually abusing young girls has been jailed for more than 12 years.
Michael Cyril Hyde, 60, stood trial in the District Court of Western Australia charged with eight counts of child sexual abuse — including one baby — committed over the course of five years, between 2011 and 2016.
The crimes, often filmed with a handheld camera, occurred while Hyde was working as a lollipop man at a western suburbs primary school, where he had regular access to young children and would often befriend their parents. Hyde’s offences also included persistently engaging in sexual conduct with a child under 16, and producing child exploitation material.
The lollipop man’s disturbing documentation of his abuses were uncovered during a raid of his home in 2016. Investigators found almost 200 videos, produced by Hyde, as well as more than 26,000 unrelated child exploitation photos and videos, downloaded from the internet. Hyde was found to have had four victims, the youngest of whom was a one-year-old whose mother he had befriended at his work.
His oldest victim was 12 years old. None of Hyde’s victims were compelled to testify during the trial, so the case hinged solely on several hours of videos, which were shown to the jury in a closed court.
The prosecution told the court that Hyde had made obscene comments during the videos, including one in which he asked a girl: “How much she would cost and how long he could have her for”.
The father-of-one admitted making the recordings, but denied that anything about his conduct could be interpreted as sexual. Instead, he claimed that he was simply brushing potato chip crumbs and sand off the children.
