‘Just do it’: Ex-teachers’ aide’s vile texts to 11yo revealed as he admits to child abuse offences against 12 children

WARNING: DISTURBING CONTENT “This could be the last thing and it’s over … I’d just do it, get it over and done with.” The boy, aged just 11, received the late night text from 18-year-old Thomas Gottaas — a man he knew — last November. The 11-year-old had been asked to send increasingly sexual videos to a person he believed to be a young girl on Snapchat, going by the name “Mads Locket”. The ‘girl’ messaged Gottaas demanding that the 11-year-old send her further content or she would “leak” videos and photos she already had of him. Gottaas pretended to help the young boy navigate the requests from “Mads Locket”. But in reality, he was playing a double agent, pressuring the boy to send him naked videos and images of himself through the fake “Mads Locket” Snapchat account that he secretly operated, then using his own number to encourage the boy to comply with the “girl’s” requests. Gottaas, who worked as a teachers’ aide throughout the period of offending in 2024, has admitted to a string of child abuse charges relating to 12 victims, none of whom can be identified due to their age. None of the victims were his students. This includes misleading children to perform sexual acts for his own sexual gratification while on live streamed video calls, directing children to undertake certain sexual acts and paying for the content, and trying to blackmail a child into sending him child abuse material (CAM). Now 19, he is currently on bail ahead of his sentencing in February. Details of Gottaas’ vile crimes have now been revealed in a statement of agreed facts tendered in court, though much of the details are too disturbing to publish. Abuser’s vile texts to child revealed Gottaas pretended to talk to Mads Locket (a fake Snapchat profile he operated), telling the 11-year-old boy the “girl” had demanded he send her more material or she would “leak” other videos she already had of the young boy. He would send the boy screenshots of his chats with Mads Locket, but in fact Gottaas was using the fake Snapchat profile to talk to himself. He tricked the 11-year-old into thinking he was helping him, including by screen recording videos of the boy on live calls to send on to the fake Snapchat profile. He encouraged the 11-year-old to comply with the “girl” and asked him to undertake certain acts, querying him on what Mads Locket had asked of him in a series of sickening Snapchat messages tendered in court documents. Gottaas coerced the child into taking explicit videos, which he screen recorded. The documents showed he continued to encourage the boy to comply with the requests of the fake Snapchat account, even when the boy refused. “This could be the last thing and it’s over,” Gottaas presses. “If i was u … I’d just do it, get it over and done with.” He quelled the boy’s fears that Mads Locket might just leak the videos anyway, telling him “she probs won’t tho” and “I don’t think she will”. When the young boy says “let’s just block her”, Gottaas replies: “Man u sure u don’t wanna just try it real quick if she keeps going after this than block her.” Gottaas recorded 16 CAM videos of the young boy, which ranged from two seconds to 11 minutes long. He saved some of them on his mobile phone. The videos were all made late on November 16, 2024. Abuser’s sickening request Gottaas paid some of his victims in exchange for live streamed content, photographs and videos of them engaging in sexual activity and poses. At one stage he requested a 16-year-old to perform a sexual act next to his sleeping 12-year-old brother for a higher payment. “Do you have siblings btw (would pay u more to send near them),” Gottaas says, going on to say “surely cmon I beg” when the boy says maybe another time. The 16-year-old later clarified his younger brother was sleeping in his mum’s bed, but he might be able to fulfil the request another night. Importantly, the 16-year-old did not follow through with this request. Gottaas paid the boy $170 between November 11 and 22 last year, though only $105 has been linked to the content the boy sent him. He asked another of his victims if he had gone to the police at one point before requesting he send him two videos in exchange for $20. “Yo rq (real quick) u never went to cops aye?” Gottaas asked the 15-year-old. “Nah … cbf (can’t be f**ked),” the boy replied. When Gottaas asks for the two videos, the boy tells him to add a girl he’s talking to on Snapchat who will do “whatever u want” instead. Hours later, Gottaas asks the boy “who tf is this chick she won’t call me rn”, and “feel like I’ve been setup ngl (not gonna lie)”. “idk just weird that u get me to message this person and I feel like I’m being scammed too … like you have done before,” Gottaas adds. “Stop guilt tripping me coz it’s not working,” the boy replies. ‘It started to get worse and worse’ The boy later told police Gottaas gave him “free money” “before anything happened” during a recorded statement in April this year. However, Gottaas “started asking for stuff” and “raising the price” for the CAM, the boy said. “What the offender was asking ‘wasn’t bad at first but it started to get worse and worse’,” the documents state. “For example, there was a couple times he asked ‘if he could come down and see me’. He also asked (the boy) and his friends to kiss.” The boy blocked him after Gottaas sent him money, but the man kept making different Snapchat accounts. Gottaas paid him a total of $210 between March and October 2024, but only $30 has been identified as related to CAM sent by the boy. Gottaas was arrested on January 21, 2025. He will be sentenced in February in the Campbelltown District Court over charges relating to using a carriage service to engage in sexual activity with a child, to transmit communication to make it easier to procure a child under the age of 16 to engage in sexual activity, and to produce, solicit, transmit, possess or control CAM. Sometimes it can be hard to tell what’s really going on, but if you’ve seen warning signs of abuse, this is how to intervene.