Ex-Big Brother psychologist and former court report writer Bob Montogmery has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children decades ago, and now faces up to 14 years in jail.
A previous consultant on Big Brother, Montgomery, has pleaded guilty to abusing 12-year-old boys while he was a scoutmaster in Sydney in the 1960s.
He was charged by NSW police in January 2019, and is listed for sentencing in the NSW District Court later this month.
He is charged with two counts of buggery, five of indecent assault of a male and one of procuring an indecent act.
Montgomery is also a former family report writer in at least seven Family Court cases, a job that can include looking into the credibility of child sex abuse allegations in custody disputes.
The psychologist has also appeared heavily as a media commentator over the years, including on ABC radio.
Professor Parkinson, Dean of the University of Queensland’s law school, told the ABC it was “very disturbing” a child sex offender played a role in parenting cases. He said it meant some of Montgomery’s child sex offences could give parents grounds to seek to overturn custody rulings.
Parkinson also said it’s hard to determine how many cases Montgomery may have influenced.
“It’s also the cases which might have settled on the basis of an adverse report from the expert where the advice was that there was no point continuing with the case any longer,” he said.
“So there may be [more] cases which need to be reviewed … we simply don’t know, and of course the court couldn’t know without going through all the files.
