A top barrister and youth charity founder charged with child abuse material offences after stepping off a plane from Cambodia has been found dead.<\/p>\n
Sydney silk Mark Philip Dennis had been released on bail in January after the Australian Border Force stopped him at Sydney Airport.<\/p>\n
If you or anyone you know needs help:<\/p>\n
He was arrested and charged after Australian Federal Police officers allegedly found an image of a boy and explicit sexualised chats with and about minors on his phone.<\/p>\n
The 60-year-old was found dead at his Leichhardt unit in Sydney’s inner west on Monday evening, NSW Police said in a statement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
A report will be prepared for the coroner.<\/p>\n
Dennis was the co-founder and chair of charity Reasonable Cause, which focuses on helping disadvantaged Cambodian youths advance their education.<\/p>\n
Phnom Penh-based non-profit Cambodian Children’s Fund announced it had ceased a funding partnership with Reasonable Cause in light of the allegations.<\/p>\n
Dennis had visited a school in the Cambodian capital for an hour in January 2022 to support a digital education project, the fund said.<\/p>\n
The initiative was extended in 2024 for three years before being terminated upon the barrister’s arrest.<\/p>\n
Dennis had been facing charges of possessing or controlling child abuse material obtained using a carriage service, transmitting such material and a related import offence.<\/p>\n
He had not entered any pleas and was due to face court again on March 18.<\/p>\n
It is expected the criminal charges will be withdrawn on that date.<\/p>\n
Dennis was admitted as a lawyer in 1991 and was principal solicitor of the Western NSW Aboriginal Legal Service.<\/p>\n
He had authored numerous articles on criminal law, including a 2017 publication titled Defending Child Sexual Assault in the Local Court.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A top barrister and youth charity founder charged with child abuse material offences after stepping off a plane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,240245,34101,240244,44,4277,240246],"class_list":["post-470323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cambodian-childrens-fund","tag-child-abuse-material","tag-mark-philip-dennis","tag-news","tag-nsw-police","tag-reasonable-cause"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}