A Hunter out-of-home care manager accused of raping, choking and assaulting five female colleagues has pleaded not guilty to all charges and will face a trial in Newcastle District Court.
Damian Ellis Spohr, 28, appeared in Newcastle Local Court on Wednesday charged with 34 counts relating to five alleged victims over a five-year period.
He pleaded not guilty to 30 charges, including multiple counts of sexual intercourse without consent, aggravated sexual assault, intentional choking and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and prosecutors withdrew the other four charges.
Spohr remains behind bars after a failed Supreme Court bail application in March and will next appear in Newcastle District Court next month to be arraigned and get a trial date.
Spohr had risen to the rank of manager of the permanency support program at We Care NSW, a Maitland-based disability, mental health and child and family services provider, before his arrest at Bolwarra Heights in December last year.
He was an aspiring academic and speaker at youth justice conferences who had spent a decade specialising in child protection and mental health.
But detectives allege he was also a serial sex offender, who had turned what started as consensual sexual encounters into violent sexual assaults, including choking one woman to the point that he dislocated her jaw and using a knife to etch the word "daddy" into her back.
Port Stephens-Hunter detectives say they formed Strike Force Chariot in March 2025 to investigate a number of alleged sexual assaults, which were believed to be linked.
During the investigation, police say they established that Spohr had allegedly sexually assaulted three female co-workers between 2023 and 2025 at a number of locations across NSW.
The Newcastle Herald revealed in March this year that two more women had come forward to make allegations of sexual assault against the 28-year-old.
Those alleged assaults are said to have occurred between 2020 and 2025 at a number of locations across the Hunter.
Spohr made a failed bid to be released on Supreme Court bail in March, a judge finding a $100,000 surety, home detention and electronic monitoring were not enough to mitigate the risk he could pose to other women.
After leaving We Care NSW to start his own business in early 2025, detectives said Spohr had been working with children despite being subject to an interim bar.
He had pleaded not guilty to that charge and was expected to face a hearing in Muswellbrook Local Court earlier this month.
However, Spohr pleaded guilty on the day of the hearing and avoided a conviction, a judge imposing a section 10.
In July, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission imposed a 10-year banning order, prohibiting Spohr from providing, being involved in or assisting in the provision of any supports or services to any NDIS participant.
