A mother has told a court of the crushing and inescapable guilt of learning she had left her son with out-of-school-hours care worker David William James, who has admitted to creating child abuse material while working at six Sydney centres.<\/p>\n
James pleaded guilty late last year to 11 charges over his creation and possession of child abuse material and is facing sentence proceedings.<\/p>\n
If you or anyone you know needs help:<\/p>\n
In a victim statement, the mother recalled how it seemed “surreal” to be asked by Australian Federal Police (AFP) to identify items of clothing in photographs, and said there was a mix of “horror and fear” when they were informed about what James had done.<\/p>\n
The mother, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, described the ongoing mental toll that has “irreversibly changed” her family.<\/p>\n
“I lie awake and wonder if my son will recall something one day and what that will do to him,” she said in the statement.<\/p>\n
Mother living with ‘constant fear’<\/p>\n
James was arrested in October 2024 over the charges, which relate to children aged five and six across centres in Sydney’s northern suburbs and the CBD.<\/p>\n
Police previously released a list of 58 centres where he had worked between 2018 and 2024 and said the offending occurred at six of the facilities.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old appeared via a video link from custody as the mother’s statement was read out in the Downing Centre District Court by a Crown solicitor.<\/p>\n
The judge heard that she no longer trusts out-of-school services with her child, who she described as an innocent little boy who deserved to feel safe and cared for.<\/p>\n
She wrote of the guilt she feels about placing him into the care of James.<\/p>\n
“What is worse than knowing what this man has done is feeling responsible for his actions,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I do not think I will ever be able to escape that guilt.”<\/p>\n
The mother also spoke of her daily torment, everyday encountering “another trigger, another reminder.”<\/p>\n
She said every small decision she makes about the care of her child now “feels weighted”, reflecting that she no longer considers “any person or place safe”.<\/p>\n
“There is a constant fear resonating in the background that something else will happen,” she said.<\/p>\n
James’s defence counsel Jeremy Etkind tendered a handwritten apology letter from his client among other material to be considered by the judge.<\/p>\n
James is set to be sentenced next month, which the victim’s mother wrote will hopefully bring “some small reprieve”.<\/p>\n
Last year, he also pleaded guilty to one charge that was laid as a result of his refusal to give officers access to his phone.<\/p>\n
The court heard he remains in segregation in custody and is in his cell for 23 and a half hours each day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother has told a court of the crushing and inescapable guilt of learning she had left her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5745,6364,27351,6969,17153,27352,27353,12364,27354,247],"class_list":["post-29783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-childcare","tag-childcare-worker","tag-david-william-james","tag-jail","tag-mother","tag-offences","tag-out-of-school-hours-care","tag-sentence","tag-sentencing-hearing","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}