A CAMERON Park man who used social media to falsely assume the identity of a Hunter high school teacher and sexually groom one of the teacher's students had spent years using online instant messaging applications to have sexually explicit conversations with teenage girls, court documents reveal.
Gerard Daniel Lazarus, a 46-year-old electrician, was represented by solicitor Donna Smith when he appeared in Newcastle Local Court on Wednesday via audio visual link from jail.
He pleaded guilty to 13 offences, including multiple counts of using a carriage service to transmit and solicit child pornography, with court documents revealing Lazarus had used a number of profiles on Yahoo, Snapchat, Kik and Whisper to send and solicit sexually explicit images from young girls between 2014 and his arrest in July 2020.
He will next appear in Newcastle District Court next month to get a sentence date.
According to court documents, Lazarus's conduct came to the attention of Australian Federal Police investigators in December 2018 after a Hunter high school teacher made a "self-report" to the NSW Board of Education.
The teacher said a former student had reached out to him on Facebook to say she believed they had been in an online sexual relationship for a number of months while he was her teacher in 2014 and 2015.
The teacher denied any relationship and the matter was ultimately referred to police.
A subsequent AFP investigation found that Lazarus had been communicating with the schoolgirl under the guise of her teacher and at no time had the teacher communicated online with the girl.
Lazarus and the girl began speaking on Whisper, an anonymous social media app, and the girl said she was a high school student who had "feelings" for a teacher.
With knowledge of the girl's school, Lazarus shaped the conversation to lead the young girl to believe he was in fact her teacher.
"If you want to continue this you'll have to send me nudes," Lazarus told the girl.
The pair communicated on the application over a number of months, during which Lazarus repeatedly asked the girl for nude images and discussed sexual activity.
After the teacher's "self-report" and the initial investigation identifying Lazarus, AFP officers raided his house and seized electronic devices, leading them to identify and later interview another victim who Lazarus had spoken to on Kik.
They also found several other explicit conversations with young girls.
The offences Lazarus was initially charged with made him the first person in NSW to be charged subject to the "First Strike" bail offence.
If you want to continue this you'll have to send me nudes.
Gerard Lazarus told a girl while posing as her high school teacher.
