Ho, pictured in sunglasses in November, pleaded guilty to using a carriage service to groom a child and possessing child abuse material.Credit: Joe Armao
Ho, 30, previously pleaded guilty to three charges including using a carriage service to groom a child and possessing child abuse material.
“Your facade of being a caring and disinterested listener was employed to further your interests, heedless of the impact upon the child who was in your care,” Higham said on Friday.
The judge said Ho was aware one of his victims was in a vulnerable position because of her home life, and their communications lasted for a year. The educator met the second victim at a camp, where he engaged in “flirtatious” behaviour, including while they were seated on a couch, the court was told.
“You pursued out-of-school meet-ups, you sent an intimate of yourself in the shower … you were clearly aware of the wrongfulness of your actions because you instructed both victims to change your name on Snapchat,” Higham said.
The game of “21 questions” was wholly inappropriate and showed Ho was sexually interested in the teenagers.
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“The questions asked in the game were the most invasive and intimate kind, not merely wholly inappropriate but clearly demonstrating a sexualised interest,” the judge said.
He said an educator’s impact could be immense and long-lasting, provided they acted in the best interests of their students.
“Your offending constituted a gross breach of trust and an exploitation of that teacher-pupil relationship,” Higham told Ho.
Ho’s lawyer, Amelia Beech, told the court earlier this week “poor self-esteem” was the reason behind the teacher’s offending. The lawyer conceded there was an “intense power imbalance” because Ho was the girls’ teacher, and that his conduct became “out of control”.
However, it ended at his own accord when Ho moved to work at a prestigious private school.
“It seems the only explanation for the offending ceasing is that [Ho] came to his senses,” Beech said.
Higham on Friday said regardless of whether Ho was driven by sexual attraction or a “self-centred need for affirmation”, his crimes were a gross breach of trust.
One of his victims previously told the court Ho’s actions deeply harmed her understanding of appropriate relationships, left her anxious and with deep fears about being taken advantage of.
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“For the last three years my trauma has echoed in me like a haunted house,” she said.
“No parent should feel worried for their kids at school while they’re at school, and no student, let alone a child, should feel unsafe around their educators.”
Police found in Ho’s possession more than 90 child abuse videos, and some of the material was described in court as “depraved and degrading”.
The Victorian Institute for Teaching was notified of the charges in early September 2022 and the next month cancelled Ho’s registration. He also had his Working With Children’s Check revoked.