HE GAVE the boys bikes, drinks, watches and rifles. He bought their mothers flowers. He was regularly invited into the family home to share meals. And when he took the boys on overnight trips he would beat and sexually assault them, before cuddling them and calling them special.
Andrew Dean McIntosh, 56, a paedophile and former volunteer cadet officer at Barker College, was yesterday found guilty of 18 child sex offences committed against three boys between 1979 and 1984.
McIntosh has previously been convicted in 1988 and 2009 of similar charges, including homosexual intercourse and indecent assault, against other teenagers.
During the trial, a District Court jury was told McIntosh methodically ''groomed'' his young victims by befriending their parents, buying them gifts and taking them motocross riding, until he was seen by both the boys and their families as a ''father figure'' or ''older brother''. Once trusted, he would take them on overnight trips from their small country town of Inverell or to other towns.
He sexually assaulted one boy, then aged about 16, under the pretext of showing him how to put on a condom, saying, ''It's OK. I'm a friend. I'm showing you what to do as a favour.''
Another victim, then in his early teens, was whipped up to 10 times with a kettle cord after he refused McIntosh sex.
Yesterday one victim and his family wept as the guilty verdicts were read out. ''He's just evil, he's a predator and it's well calculated … he manipulates issues and situations to benefit himself,'' the man, now 41, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said.
McIntosh was on parole for indecently assaulting a child when he was a volunteer cadet officer at Barker College in 1991 and 1992, during which time he sexually, physically and emotionally abused a student, Sascha Chandler.
McIntosh will be sentenced on July 18.
