I installed a clear shower curtain and would sing songs and play peekaboo and sometimes he would shake his rattle to entertain himself so that I could start each morning fresh and clean. This was refused by Judge Brian Knox.He used to sit comfortably in the bouncy chair on the floor outside the tub every morning while I showered. On acquittal, Mr McIntosh asked that his name be suppressed. The principal reported them to the Department of Community Services, who contacted police. The court heard that after the Vanuatu trip, the father told his sons' school principal of his concerns. The boys had a sleepover at his unit when he took them to the Easter Show. "Andy became quite regular at our place … he would come and help the kids with schoolwork … he was very excitable and wanted to always make things fun," the mother said. The family met Mr McIntosh and he paid for the boys to take scuba training for underwater work. The journey to Vanuatu started in January 2005, when the boys were given a business card while skateboarding in Manly. On Vanuatu, the boys shared a hut with Mr McIntosh, while their father, who arrived some days later, shared a hut with Mr Stevenson. "Children swimming underwater was mentioned … it was never planned that they would be naked," he said. The scriptwriter, Daniel Stevenson, said the naked footage was not in his script. "They are just an attempt at refilming the images that you see, the beautiful images you see in The Blue Lagoon as they grow from children to adolescents, swimming through the coral."
The jury was shown excerpts from the 1963 film Lord of the Flies and the The Blue Lagoon (1980). Another boy whom he had taken to Vanuatu the previous year had been given a ski holiday at Perisher with his family.Īs for the nude footage and photographs, Mr Radojev argued they were covered by the statutory defence that they were for "artistic" purposes. The jury heard that during the three months he knew the boys, he bought expensive skateboards, iPods and an electric guitar, and paid $2500 for the mother's airline ticket to her home country. The court heard Mr McIntosh had paid more than $10,000 into each of the parents' accounts to help with school fees, and was suing them. He said their evidence was unreliable, that children could lie and be manipulated by parents, and that the parents had a motive to see his client jailed. The DVD was not made to give to the boys' family."Īlex Radojev, for Mr McIntosh, pointed out inconsistencies in the boys' accounts about shower blocks on the island, and that the elder boy had initially told his mother and police he had not been touched. It was not part of any genuine artistic purpose. He was getting the boys in the habit of being naked around him. "This filming was all part and parcel of the accused's grooming process. Sean Flood, the barrister for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, said photos of the naked boys taken after they were spray-tanned at Mr McIntosh's studio, and footage from Vanuatu, were not "happy family holiday shots, but is clearly a sexual preoccupation with the prepubescent male form". In the most recent trial, the two brothers, who were 10 and 11 at the time, gave evidence that "Andy" had touched their groins and buttocks, either in a shower at his studio in St Leonards, or in Vanuatu. In the late 1980s he was jailed for indecently assaulting a person under 16 and assault with an act of indecency.ĭiscussions in the jury's absence revealed that in the 1980s Mr McIntosh was alleged to have molested children in a shower. The jury did not know this was not the first time Mr McIntosh had been accused of being a pedophile. ANDREW DEAN McINTOSH had a dream and a budget - $500,000 to make a short feature film with more than a nodding resemblance to The Blue Lagoon.īut nude footage of the "bronzed Aussie" boys he was testing for the film, whom he took on a $25,000 filming expedition to Vanuatu in April 2005, cast the 50-year-old filmmaker in a different light.Īfter a six-week trial, a District Court jury took just 4½ hours this week to acquit Mr McIntosh of possessing child pornography, aggravated assault and committing acts of indecency on a person under 16 outside Australia.