An Illawarra man arrested for sexually propositioning a six-year-old boy in a Corrimal shopping centre was later found to have a video depicting himself having sex with a young child, a court has heard.
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Police allege they discovered the video of Anthonio Scavera engaged in sexual acts with the boy, who appeared to be about seven years of age, on electronic items seized from his house on December 18 last year.
Port Kembla Local Court heard Scavera, 29, came to police attention earlier that day after security guards at Stockland Corrimal contacted them saying two families had complained about indecent acts occurring in one of the toilet blocks.
In the first incident, a six-year-old boy claimed Scavera asked the child to "touch his [Scavera's] doodle".
When the boy refused, Scavera allegedly asked him to "watch me do a wee".
The boy left the bathroom and immediately told his mother, who alerted a security guard.
At 11.35am, about 15 minutes later, a father and his seven-year-old son went into the same toilet block and walked into separate cubicles.
Police allege Scavera was in a cubicle between the pair.
The man later told police he saw Scavera's shadow making frenzied movements.
Coupled with sounds coming from inside the cubicle, the father said he believed the person inside was masturbating.
When the father and son exited the cubicles, the son allegedly said to his father: "Dad, someone in that toilet just there put their hand under my toilet wall into my toilet".
The father immediately reported the incident to a security officer, who was speaking to the mother of the first complainant at the time.
The court heard that while both parents were speaking to security, Scavera emerged from the toilet block, and, without prompting, said: "I haven't done anything wrong. I did a nice thing for him [the first boy] ... and now I'm going to get in trouble".
Police arrived and arrested Scavera a short time later.
They allegedly found child pornography on a mobile phone and tablet device he was carrying.
During a later search of his house, police seized a camera, an iPad, multiple computer hard drives, a computer tower, and male underwear that was labelled size 4-6.
Scavera was charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, possession of child abuse material, committing an act of indecency, inciting a child to commit an act of indecency and behaving in an offensive manner in a public place.
He was remanded in custody, however on Wednesday sought release on bail, saying he would live with his father and stepmother and agree to not leave the house unless accompanied by them.
However, magistrate Michael Stoddart refused to release Scavera, saying the allegations against him were very serious and the community needed to be protected.
The case was adjourned to February 18 for mention.