By Sarah McPhee
A former Sydney deputy high school principal who sent explicit messages to undercover police posing as a 14-year-old girl has been jailed for at least two years by a judge who said the man had every intention of carrying out the planned sexual activity.
Damian Scott Wanstall, 49, was sentenced on Wednesday to a maximum three years and seven months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to a charge of using a carriage service to procure a child under 16 for sexual activity.
Damian Scott Wanstall sent increasingly explicit messages to police posing as a 14-year-old girl.Credit: Janie Barrett
Wanstall was the deputy principal and a maths teacher at Kellyville High School, in Sydney’s north-west.
Corrective Services officers walked into the courtroom in the middle of Wanstall’s sentence and later took him into custody.
Sentencing Wanstall in Parramatta District Court, Judge Andrew Colefax said he would refer to the undercover police as “the 14-year-old girl, because that was your belief”.
The judge stared directly at Wanstall for the sentence. At times, the former teacher hung his head.
According to the agreed facts, Wanstall posted an advertisement on classifieds website Locanto under the handle “Johnno33” that read, “Any legal Indian or Filo teens want fun” and “40yo aussie daddy seeking sexy play this weekend. Will reward. Can host discreetly rouse hill”.
Messages were exchanged from the morning of Thursday, December 3, to the afternoon of Monday, December 7, when Wanstall was arrested in Westmead with $200 cash in his pocket.
“You sent a message to her saying you were almost there ... at the agreed meeting place,” the judge said.
“You went to the place that you and she agreed to meet at, at which sexual activity was going to take place between you and that 14-year-old for money, and you had money on you for that purpose.”
One message from Wanstall to the purported teenager read: “If we meet every day next week at 200 you’ll have $1000 by end of week”.
Regarding the weekday messages, the judge said there was no reason for him to assume Wanstall was not at work.
Colefax said the communications became “very graphic, and developed to quite a concerning level”.
“[There is] nothing in the material to suggest that if the child had been real, your plans would not have been put into place,” the judge said.
“Fortunately, for our community, that was not a 14-year-old girl. But you did not know that.”
He accepted Wanstall has a problem with alcohol and had a problem at the time of the offence, but said it did not go far in minimising his criminality, given the extended period of communications.
“Even when you weren’t drinking, the extent of your dependence on alcohol affected your decision-making capacity,” the judge said.
He said a rational conclusion was that, while affected by alcohol, Wanstall became disinhibited.
“On this occasion, something which is part of you, that is the sexual interest in younger people below the age of consent, emerged,” the judge said.
“But for the fact it was an AOI [assumed online identity], you would have carried through.”
Colefax said there was no evidence before the court of Wanstall having a sexual interest in children beyond the date of his offence.
He said Wanstall’s explanation to a forensic psychiatrist that he had posted the advertisement to gain the attention of a former partner was implausible, as there was nothing to suggest the woman knew of the platform or that Wanstall was behind the username.
The judge said it was difficult to be satisfied as to the genuineness of Wanstall’s remorse, “as opposed to being sorry for the position in which you find yourself”.
Colefax said he needed to fix a sentence to deter others from doing what Wanstall had done.
“Particularly in the dark world of the internet where parents have little meaningful opportunity of supervising what their children are accessing,” he said.
Wanstall received a 10 per cent discount upon his sentence for his late guilty plea, weeks before his trial had been due to start. His sentence was also backdated to include nine days previously spent in custody and a period of his bail effectively under home detention.
Wanstall will first be eligible for parole in May 2025. His maximum term expires in December 2026.
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