Former MasterChef finalist and Sydney swimming coach Paul Frost has been charged with 57 child sex offences involving 11 boys from the same swim school.
The 43-year-old was arrested at his Sylvania home in Sydney’s south last week, accused of grooming and sexually assaulting two boys.
But before his bail hearing on Thursday, he faced an additional 47 charges, including aggravated sexual assault offences, involving another nine boys between the ages of eight and 16.
WATCH: Former swim coach accused of child sex offences
Paul is the son of Doug Frost, Olympic swimming legend Ian Thorpe’s former coach.
The alleged abuse took place at his father’s business, the Doug Frost Swim School at Padstow, between 1997 and 2009.
Paul took over operating his swim school in Padstow before it was was deregistered as a business in 2012.
He then turned his hand to catering, and he appeared on MasterChef, making it to the finals in season one in 2009.
There is no suggestion that either Ian Thorpe or Doug Frost were involved or knew about any wrongdoing.
Court documents obtained by news.com.au allege Paul Frost convinced a boy to pull down his shorts and masturbate in front of him.
The documents also claim Paul Frost committed sexual intercourse without consent.
His lawyer, Sebastian De Brennan, questioned in court the timing of the 11 alleged victims coming forward to police.
“The corroborating of all this, why have these individuals come forward now? What is striking about this is that they were all part of the swim class,” he said.
“And the possibility of concoction or contamination.”
But the police prosecutor said the alleged victims were adults now and were unlikely to have been in contact with each other.
The accused’s wife, Ivana Frost, who is a national food manager for IKEA, provided written testimony stating she was in “shock and utter disbelief” at the charges against her “loving and caring husband”.
She said their 10-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter had been left traumatised after their father was arrested “in front of them as they were getting ready to leave for school”.
She also expressed concern about her husband’s “very gentle personality” making him “extremely vulnerable in the prison environment”.
Magistrate Chris McRobert granted strict conditional bail, saying keeping Paul in custody for what would likely be over a year before trial would “effectively ruin his family”.
He will next appear at Bankstown Court on October 9.
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