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As Tom* walked into his young son’s bedroom to check his clothes for video footage of abuse at the hands of a daycare worker, he had one thought: “This doesn’t happen to us.”
The clothes matched, and an unimaginable realization followed.
David James was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in prison with a non-parole period of seven years.Michael Howard
“It’s incredibly frustrating to the point where you almost put it out of your mind,” Tom said.
“There was a strong desire to believe that whatever happened, it wasn’t a big deal.”
Tom shared his story with Herald as police revealed how they caught his child’s abuser, Sydney daycare worker David William James. A 27-year-old man was sentenced on Thursday to 12 years in prison with a non-parole period of seven years for sex offenses against nine children.
How a kindergarten teacher lured children with threats
Tom learned the heartbreaking truth when detectives began to uncover James’ depravity.
During a daycare shift, Tom’s son was ordered by a daycare worker to clean the staff restroom after telling him to play in the dirt.
“If you don’t come here, your mom will be very angry with you.”
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The seven-year-old boy told him he knew the area was off-limits to children but complied when threatened.
Inside the sink, the boy was assaulted and filmed.
Tom saw James in passing and described him as shy and avoiding eye contact. He couldn’t even imagine what he was capable of.
After AFP contacted him and his ex-wife and they established that their son had been a victim, disbelief eventually gave way to devastation and cynicism.
“It helped me not be so naive about the world,” Tom said. “It’s affected my work a lot. I’m going to therapy. I’ve studied the reality around us and I have a lot less trust in people.”
At first, his son became angry when asked about what happened. After a while, he opened up to his mother. He said he wanted “Mr. James to die.”
The parents struggled to balance their desire to help police take the predator off the streets and protect their son from the horrors committed against him.
Hunt for “Remy”
James first came to the attention of police under the alias “Remy” on the dark web.
Remy always posted on his favorite dark forum between 9:30pm and 2am Sydney time, where users shared photos and kinky fantasies about real children.
It was likely the pedophile was Australian given the hours he worked, but there were few clues as to his identity. Even though Remy was an active participant, he was not wrong.
Police have obtained CCTV footage of childcare worker David James (far right) being abused in Chatswood.New South Wales Police
That was until September 2024, when he posted six photos of little boys. One, in a blue shirt and shorts, sat in the crowd on his father’s shoulders.
Officers from Queensland Police’s Operation Whiskey Bo observed and extracted Remy’s metadata from a single image.
They handed him over to the Australian Federal Police, who identified Remy’s time and place: Japanese Matsuri Festival, 5:13 p.m., 13 September 2024, Chatswood Mall.
Footage from the festival shows a blur of color and activity. Officials chat under red and white lanterns, families browse kimonos and buy bowls of ramen from street vendors, and children fold origami paper to play with.
In grainy images from cameras near the Commonwealth Bank, a boy appears in the frame wearing a blue and orange shirt on a man’s shoulders.
Behind them, a lone man in a black jacket looks over his shoulder, takes his phone out of his pocket and takes a photo, then disappears out of frame in the direction of the station.
Moments later, the man is captured on a second camera heading to the Orchard Hotel to buy beer. He paid by card.
Video surveillance of James at the Orchard Tavern.New South Wales Police
The next day, detectives went to the stately brick cottage in Artarmon, to James’s childhood bedroom.
Adopted into a wealthy family, educated at the prestigious private Knox School and once trained as a police officer, and then leaving the force shortly after graduation, James seemed strangely calm, slightly smug and not too bothered by intruders with badges and guns.
He objected, refusing to give investigators the passwords to his devices.
Refusal to issue a digital access order, as the offense is known, carries a prison term of up to two years. But it’s a simple calculation for those looking decades ahead if the contents of their phone are exposed.
James’s only hope was that AFP Operation Arctile detectives would never see the images and videos he took of nine children exposed in nursery school bathrooms while he stood behind them, committing heinous acts.
James later admitted in court that it was a “blatant betrayal” to use the children in his care as abuse material for the entertainment of his fellow pedophiles.
Race against time and refusal to share passwords
Even though James was led from the home in handcuffs, investigators concluded he was confident he could avoid serious jail time.
“He was on the dark web, hiding in anonymity, and for a while he got away with it,” one of the investigators said.
An earlier court sketch by David James.Rocco Fazzari
Five days later, the court released James on bail. He still faces only one charge of failure to hand over his passwords.
It was a race against time to either hack James’ phone or find compelling evidence that he was Remy.
“We didn’t want him to go free again,” one investigator said.
“There are children who are at immediate risk, that’s all.”
James’ encryption didn’t last even a month. On October 10, his phone was unlocked by AFP’s digital forensic laboratory and 22 images and videos containing abuse material against children aged between five and eight were recovered.
Police re-arrested James, this time on a more severe set of charges, including four counts of using a child under the age of 14 to create child abuse material, three counts of committing and filming a sexual act with a child to create violent material, and four counts of producing or possessing child abuse material.
“We didn’t even need your passwords,” they told him.
But this was the beginning of the most difficult chapter in Operation Arctail. James signed children up during his kindergarten shifts. As with Tom’s son, some content was recorded in areas inaccessible to children.
None of the perverted images of James showed the victims’ faces. This meant the AFP victim identification team spent months analyzing tile patterns, urinal shapes and toilet layouts, patterns on children’s underwear and shoe catalogs in an attempt to narrow down the entries.
James randomly worked in 58 centers and the number of children he could reach numbered in the hundreds.
The victim identification team tracks down at-risk children to get them away from abusers, but in Arctile’s case, their work also allows investigators to reach out to victims directly rather than alerting every parent who had a child at James’s centers.
David James’ entry in the 2017 Knox Grammar yearbook.
It’s an approach that isolates traumatic information to the families directly affected and allows detectives to arrive with psychologists already in tow, while also preventing the case from contaminating the fearful wider school community.
Herald happened to be in court during James’s first appearance on child abuse charges and decided not to oppose the gag order until his victims were identified.
It took the victim identification team a year to find all nine victims based on fine details in the images.
Their identities were confirmed by horrified parents like Tom. Some told the court that James had destroyed their sense of security and trust in others.
James sat emotionless Thursday after learning he would remain behind bars until at least 2031, with time already served.
Judge Guy Newton condemned the abuse of trust and power for sexual gratification.
“In the community, (he) was a pro-social young man who was actively pursuing a career in the police force, interacted well with others and was confident,” he said.
“In private, however, (he) harbored deviant sexual interests…James led a double life.”
Although Tom – along with the families of all the victims – will serve a life sentence for the unforgivable betrayal, he is pleased with James’ punishment.
Tom said his biggest frustration is the interaction between the state government’s child care and protective systems. James was sacked from his job at centers run by Primary OSHCare’s parent company, Junior Adventures Group, following a number of complaints. However, he was asked to continue his casual work at the recruitment company Randstad as it did not affect his work with children check.
He hoped improvements would come from a recent overhaul of the system, including a new National Register of Early Childhood Workers, which centralizes clearances, qualifications, training and compliance measures for all staff in childcare and out-of-school hours (OOSH) centres. However, he felt that people like James would continue to find loopholes in the overburdened system.
“I had a lot of faith in the system, but it was disjointed,” Tom said.
However, he believes the fact that police “even caught this guy is evidence that some of the systems we have in place are working.”
*Tom is a pseudonym
Anyone needing support can call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), the National Sexual Abuse and Redress Helpline 1800 211 028, Helpline 13 11 14 and Children’s Helpline 1800 55 1800.
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