Keith David Kohler, 32, a former Nhill ambulance officer, pleaded guilty in Horsham Magistrate's Court on October 10 to one count of indecent assault, four counts of an indecent act in the presence of a child under 16 and one count of having invited a child to participate in the making of child pornography.

A Wimmera magistrate convicted him and issued an 18-month suspended jail sentence.

The court heard Kohler touched the breast of a girl, then 12, while she was sleeping, before inviting two teenage boys to masturbate with him while watching a pornographic video.

The court also heard Kohler asked one of the boys to take naked pictures of himself on his mobile phone and send them to him. The three children were family friends of Kohler.

The parents of the victims, however, said a suspended sentence was not enough.

One mother, whose 16-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter were victims of Kohler's behaviour, said her children described coming forward as a `waste of time'. The children cannot be named for legal reasons.

"The sentence is a joke, there is no sentence," she said.

"There was no point in the kids even saying something.

"If they kept it to themselves, we'd still be able to be a family. Because we said what we thought was right our lives have been turned upside down."

The woman's husband had been best friends with Kohler for the past 18 years. At the time of the offences, Kohler worked for Rural Ambulance Victoria in Nhill. He has since left the Wimmera and now lives in Adelaide.

"Someone in his position should not have been able to do it and get away with it," she said.

"He used to say it was the most trusted profession in the world; well I guess we were the suckers, and that makes it even worse."

She said the offences had impacted heavily on her children.

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