Theatre Producer Charged

The identity of the prominent Brisbane theatre producer charged with sex offences has been confirmed as Timothy Noel O’Connor- who headed up the now collapsed Harvest Rain group of companies and training schools.

The 42-year-old is facing dozens of charges involving eight alleged victims, including rape, attempted rape, sexual assault, indecent treatment of a child, recordings in breach of privacy, fraud, common assault and indecent acts that spanned 20 years.

The alleged victims were aged between 12 and 29.

According to The Courier Mail police allege O’Connor exposed himself, masturbated, had oral sex with children and obtained indecent images of complainants through covert filming in his bathroom.

(O'Connor is entitled to a presumption of innocence and  Stage Whispers requests that no comments be made about the facts of the case on our social media.)

In 2012 Tim O'Connor was nominated for Brisbane person of the year and in 2014 he won a Gold Matilda award for his work with Harvest Rain Theatre.

The Harvest Rain Group of companies was Australia’s largest non-professional theatre company and closed overnight when O’Connor was charged last year. It had branched into multi-million dollar arena productions with A-list stars and up to 500 children in the cast.

Stage Whispers understands that it had up to nine different productions in various stages of preparation at the time and all but one were cancelled.

The companies linked to the Harvest Rain Group included The Brisbane Academy of Musical Theatre,  AVT Live Entertainment Group, Dare Artist Management and the Australian Youth Talent Academy,

They were placed into liquidation and according to the initial creditor’s report issued in April had a total of 1.8 million dollars in debt.

Creditors ranged from The Australian Tax Office, which is owed almost four hundred thousand dollars, to families who had paid for training ‘boot camps’ and costume fees.