A MAN has admitted to sexually abusing seven children he met through his neighbours, partners, camping trips and a car club across more than six years.
The 49-year-old Hunter man, who cannot be named to protect the identities of his young victims, pleaded guilty to more than 20 child sexual abuse charges in Newcastle Local Court.
"The offender is committed for sentencing in the district court at Newcastle," magistrate Caleb Franklin said.
The man remains behind bars and made no application for bail, meaning he will await his sentence date in prison.
The Hunter-based Child Abuse Squad swooped on the offender in November 2021, arresting and charging him with sexually abusing seven children, including boys and girls aged six to 13, between 2015 and 2021.
The extent of the man's secretive, years-long offending unravelled after a police complaint was made and word spread between families who had spent time with him over the years.
Court documents reveal how he told a 12-year-old boy, who was his second cousin, that "what happens in the man cave stays in the man cave" after assaulting him in the offender's bedroom during school holidays in 2018.
Another young boy told police "he would threaten to hurt my family if I don't do what he says", while one of the girls reported how the man told her that when he sexually touched her, it was a secret.
Court documents detail how the man moved to a home in Kurri Kurri with his mother in 2015, and became friendly with their neighbours.
He first sexually touched the boy next door when he was about six or seven years old in 2015, and the offender was 41, while the child was playing at the offender's house.
The man and the family from next door regularly went camping together between 2016 and 2021, and the boy told police the abuse had happened multiple times in a caravan and in a tent.
The man also admitted to abusing a young girl during a group outing to the Maitland pool on a public holiday when she was eight, as well as while she was on a slippery dip at his neighbour's house when she was 10.
The man's victims are children he met through a car club, the son of his now ex-wife, the son of his then-girlfriend, the children of families who were friends with the next door neighbours, as well as his neighbour and his second cousin.
The mother of one of the young boys involved asked her son in 2021 if the offender had been inappropriate with him, and the boy replied that "he was" but that he just wanted to "bury it deep ... and forget about it".
The man will front Newcastle District Court for the first time next month, where he will formally enter pleas and be handed a date for sentence.
He pleaded guilty to 25 charges, including eight of indecent assault; nine of sexual intercourse with a child, including one aggravated; six of intentionally sexually touching a child; and two counts of committing an act of indecency.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) ordered some of those charges not to be sentenced individually but will be taken into account when the total sentence is handed down.
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