School lollipop man jailed for molesting children

WARNING: This article contains graphic details that may be triggering for some people.

A Perth lollipop man who filmed himself molesting young children he was babysitting, has been jailed for more than 12 years.

Michael Cyril Hyde, 60, befriended the mother of two of the girls while working outside a Western Suburbs school.

The youngest of his four victims was a baby.

Police found nearly 200 home-made videos and more than 26,000 unrelated child exploitation images when they raided his house in 2016.

Hyde admitted to possessing child pornography but insisted there was nothing sexual about the videos he filmed himself.

In fighting those charges, he forced a jury to spend days watching the perverted recordings in a closed courtroom. 

Hyde claimed two of the girls suffered from an auto-immune disease and he filmed them to check for lesions on their skin and "make sure they were clean".

In sentencing, Judge Felicity Davis said it was clear what he did was sexual.

"You are unable to appreciate what was plain to everyone else during your trial," she said.

"Any reasonable member of the community, watching this hour after hour, would find this confronting."

Hyde will have to serve at least 10 and a half years behind bars.