Daycare chain's investors demand answers over childcare safety crisis
The case against Brown and his co-accused, Michael Wilson, will return to court briefly on Tuesday, while investors in the publicly listed G8 Education are demanding a meeting with the company's management after this masthead revealed G8 may have misled the stock market about what it knew and when.
The charges against Brown plunged the state into its most serious childcare safety crisis when they were publicly revealed on July 1.
More than 2000 children who had attended any of the 24 daycares where the 26-year-old had worked since 2017 have been recommended for testing for sexually transmitted infections, and pressure continues to mount over the failure of state oversight authorities and childcare operators who employed Brown over the years to act on red flags about his behaviour.
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Brown faces 70 charges of sexual offending against children at G8's Creative Garden centre in Point Cook while he worked there in 2022 and 2023, with police alleging that he abused eight toddlers and babies, and contaminated children's food with bodily fluids.
Wilson, who has never worked in childcare, faces 40 charges, including possessing child abuse material, bestiality and rape. It is not clear how Brown and Wilson knew each other; however, it is alleged the pair communicated via encrypted app Telegram.
The two men remain in custody, are due back in court in September and have been excused from appearing at an administrative application by police and prosecutors at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday morning.
G8 has repeatedly claimed, including in correspondence to the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), that it first learnt of the allegations against the 26-year-old on July 1, when the charges were first publicised by police.
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