Ex-forensics officer in police investigations charged with possessing child abuse material

A public servant employed by Victoria Police to work on child abuse investigations has been charged with possessing and accessing child abuse material.

Vincent Manner will face court in Bendigo on November 4 on 23 charges, including 10 counts of possessing and accessing child abuse material, two counts of misconduct in public office and 11 counts of failing to provide information under warrant.

Manner, 57, worked as a digital forensics officer between June 2016 and August 2025 before he was stood down with pay. He resigned in November 2025, while still under investigation.

The allegations against him sparked a year-long police audit in which dozens of active court cases had to be reviewed, and that caused some of them to be delayed.

Digital forensics officers are not sworn police members, but they support police by extracting data from digital devices which can then be presented in court as evidence.

Manner was arrested in October 2025, after which police wrote to lawyers advising them they had “become aware of potential irregularities with the storage and/or extraction and examination of some devices” during an audit of the man’s work.

These irregularities prompted police to assess at least 112 cases before Victorian courts that may have been impacted.

This masthead has followed more than a dozen cases in which Manner had handled evidence as they reappeared before the courts. Some of those matters were adjourned multiple times as police needed time to re-extract evidence from the devices.

Manner was charged more than a year after his arrest. In their statement last week confirming the charges, Victoria Police said they had completed the reexamination of evidence known as Operation Turnberry.

“At this stage it is believed all issues have been identified and reviewed and impacted parties have been notified,” a spokesperson said.

Police would not confirm exactly how many cases had ultimately been disrupted, saying the matter was now before the courts.

A LegalAid spokesperson told this masthead it knew of at least eight cases that had been affected by the audit, almost all of them delayed.

When the investigation was made public last year, the Centre Against Sexual Assault said it was worried the situation would deter victims from reaching out to support services or to police.

Jean*, of Shepparton, has been personally affected by the delays. She heard in October last year that a case being heard affecting her family would need to be audited, even though it had already been adjourned twice for unrelated reasons.

Jean said the case was adjourned a further four times before police confirmed in May that the digital evidence hadn’t been corrupted.

“Every time we’ve been following it, we’ve had to make the trip to Bendigo, which means time off work and the stress and trauma of being there,” Jean said, adding that the family’s attempts to seek intervention orders had also been delayed by the court process.

“Because we don’t have resolution in this case, we’re still going through it.”

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