‘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’ll be over… I’d do it, I’d be done with it.”
The boy, who was just 11 years old, received a late-night text from 18-year-old Thomas Gottaas, a man he met last November.
The 11-year-old boy was asked to send increasingly sexually explicit videos on Snapchat under the name “Mads Locket” to a person he believed to be a young girl.
The ‘girl’ sent a message to Gottaas, demanding that the 11-year-old boy send her more content, otherwise his videos and photos would be “leaked”.
Gottaas pretended to help the young boy navigate requests from “Mads Locket.” But in reality, he was playing a double agent who pressured the boy into sending nude videos and pictures through the fake “Mads Locket” Snapchat account he secretly operated, and then used his own trick to encourage the boy to comply with the “girl’s” wishes.
Gottaas, who worked as a teacher’s aide during the period of the crimes in 2024, pleaded guilty to a series of child abuse charges involving 12 victims, none of whom were identified due to their ages. None of the victims were his students.
This includes directing children to engage in sexual acts for their own sexual gratification in livestreamed video calls, directing children to engage in specific sexual acts and pay for content, and blackmailing a child into sending child abuse material (CAM).
He is now 19 and is currently on bail ahead of sentencing in February.
Details of Gottaas’ heinous crimes have now been revealed in a statement of agreed facts presented in court, but many of the details are too disturbing to be published.
Disgusting messages written by the abuser to the child were revealed
Gottaas pretended to talk to Mads Locket (a fake Snapchat profile he operated), telling the 11-year-old boy that he wanted the “girl” to send him more material or he would “leak” other videos of the young boy.
He was sending the boy screenshots of his conversations with Mads Locket, but Gottaas was actually using the fake Snapchat profile to talk to him.
He tricked the 11-year-old boy into thinking he was helping him by recording videos of the boy’s screen during live conversations to send to his fake Snapchat profile.
He encouraged the 11-year-old boy to go “girl” and asked him to take certain actions, and questioned what Mads Locket wanted from him in a series of sickening Snapchat messages presented in court documents.
Gottaas forced the boy to make obscene videos that he recorded on the screen.
He continued to encourage the child to comply with the fake Snapchat account’s demands even when the child refused, documents showed.
“This could be the last thing, and it’s over,” Gottaas presses.
“If I were you… I would do this, I would end it.”
He quelled the boy’s fears that Mads Locket might leak the videos anyway, telling him “he probably won’t” and “I don’t think he will.”
When the young boy says, “let’s block him,” Gottaas replies, “Dude, if he keeps going for it, you don’t want to try and block him right away.”
Gottaas recorded 16 CAM videos of the young boy, ranging from two seconds to 11 minutes. He recorded some of it on his mobile phone.
The videos were all shot on late November 16, 2024.
The disgusting request of the harasser
Gottaas paid some of his victims in exchange for livestreamed content, photos and videos depicting sexual activity and poses.
At one stage he demanded that a 16-year-old teenager perform sexual acts in the presence of his sleeping 12-year-old brother in exchange for a higher fee.
Gottaas says, “By the way, do you have siblings (I’ll give you more money to send them to them)?” and when the boy says maybe another time, he says, “Of course, come on, I’m begging.”
The 16-year-old later said that his younger brother was sleeping in his mother’s bed, but he could fulfill his wish another night.
More importantly, the 16-year-old did not comply with this request.
Gottaas paid the boy $170 between November 11 and 22 last year, but only $105 was attributed to the content the boy sent him.
He asked another victim if she had gone to the police before demanding she send him two videos in exchange for $20.
“No (too fast) you never went to the police, did you?” Gottaas asked the 15-year-old.
“No… cbf (can’t be fucked),” the boy replied.
When Gottaas asks for the two videos, the boy tells him to add a girl he talked to on Snapchat who will do “whatever you want” instead.
Hours later, Gottaas asks the boy, “who is this chick who isn’t calling me?” and “I feel like I’ve been set up (I won’t lie).”
“It’s very strange that you made me send a message to this person and I feel like I was tricked… just like you did before,” Gottaas adds.
“Stop letting the guilt trip me up because it didn’t work,” the boy replies.
‘It’s getting worse and worse’
The boy later told police in a recorded statement in April of this year that Gottaas gave him “free money” “before anything happened.”
But the boy said Gottaas “started asking for things” for CAM and “started raising his price.”
“What the offender asked was ‘it wasn’t bad at first, but it started to get worse,'” the documents state.
“For example, he asked several times ‘can he come down and see me?’ He also asked (the boy) and his friends for a kiss.”
The boy blocked Gottaas after he sent him money, but the man continued to open different Snapchat accounts.
Gottaas paid him a total of $210 between March and October 2024, but only $30 was determined to be related to the CAM the boy sent.
Gottaas was arrested on January 21, 2025.
He will be sentenced in Campbelltown District Court in February on charges of using a carriage service to engage in sexual activity with a child, transmitting communications to facilitate sexual activity by a child under 16, and producing, soliciting, transmitting, possessing or controlling CAM.
Sometimes it can be hard to tell what’s really happening, but if you see warning signs of abuse, that’s how you can intervene.
