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BREAKING NEWS Karl Stefanovic clashes with woman calling for ALL male workers to be banned from childcare centres - after 26-year-old man charged with sickening offences shocks Australia

BREAKING NEWS Karl Stefanovic clashes with woman calling for ALL male workers to be banned from childcare centres - after 26-year-old man charged with sickening offences shocks Australia

Daily Mail​02-07-2025
A proposal from a collective of child abuse survivors calling for a ban on male workers in childcare centres has ignited a fierce debate.
The proposal comes after two men were charged by sex crimes detectives.
Joshua Dale Brown, 26, was accused of abusing eight children aged between five months and two years at one centre in Point Cook.
Brown has been charged with 70 offences, including sexual penetration of a child, producing child abuse material and recklessly contaminating goods to cause alarm or anxiety. The latter charge refers to alleged contamination of food with bodily fluids.
His arrest triggered a public health alert, with Victoria's Chief Health Officer warning that 1,200 children should get STI testing.
Brown had worked at 20 childcare facilities since 2017.
On Wednesday it emerged a second man, Michael Simon Wilson, 36, from Hoppers Crossing, had appeared in court on the same day as Brown, charged with child abuse material, sex offences and bestiality.
It is understood Michael Simon Wilson's alleged offending not connected to childcare facilities or against same alleged victims as Joshua Dale Brown.
Louise Edmonds, who is leading the proposal, spoke with Karl Stefanovic, advocating for a complete ban on male workers in the sector.
'Look, it is extreme for one. But the thing is, we're now seeing this is the third case of huge amounts of children being exposed to alleged paedophiles and alleged child sex abuses in a childcare centre.
'What we're seeing is that less than 8 per cent of male workers are actually in the industry.
Stefanovic pushed back, highlighting the challenges already faced by men in the sector.
'Men have a right to work in that area. And so many of them are dedicated.
'The perception is already hard enough for them. And when a story like this happens, it makes it even more difficult for them.
But Ms Edmonds argued that the safety of children must come before concerns about gender equality.
'We shouldn't be looking at the equality space in the sector. We actually have to look at the safety first and foremost of our most vulnerable citizens, which are our children, and a lot of them are voiceless.
'So children start communicating well at around two years old. The children under two years old, they cannot speak.'
Stefanovic continued to push back highlighting the challenges already faced by men in the sector.
'I get all that But when you're talking about inequality, banning men just for being men, that's the very definition of it
But Ms Edmonds stood firm, citing statistics.
'So the sad reality is there's so much lived experience and evidence and data around child sex offenders, and 97 per cent of them are male.
'And this is a scary topic and a lot of people, we don't want to talk about it because it's so horrific when it comes to the abuse of children.
As part of her proposal, Edmonds also called for increased surveillance in childcare centre.
'It takes seconds to abuse a child. I'm sorry to say that, but this is the reality. But what we can do with the CCTV, it is linked to a third party child protection agency.
'It is a deterrent if you put it into the areas that are blind spots, like the sleeping quarters, the change tables and the toilets and it is off site, what happens is it deters predators.'
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Political censors have cynically hijacked vital child protections
Political censors have cynically hijacked vital child protections

Telegraph

time10 hours ago

  • Telegraph

Political censors have cynically hijacked vital child protections

Britons woke up last week to discover that their firehose of digital smut had been strangled, albeit temporarily for consenting adults. Undeniably, the introduction of age verification regulations does mark a huge change in our relationship with the internet, hitherto a pornographic free-for-all. It may feel like a shock to find a third party inserting itself between you and a website, apparently demanding to know who you are, but it shouldn't be a surprise: it's eight years since the UK Government published its online harms green paper under Theresa May, and The Telegraph launched its Duty of Care campaign the following year. After much wrangling, the result was the 2023 Online Safety Act. In March, the first part of went into effect, placing new obligations on platforms to remove content that is legal, but harmful to children: suicide advice, eating disorders or dangerous stunt challenges. The second phase went into force last week, requiring age checks for pornography sites. 'Companies have effectively been treating all users as if they're adults, leaving children potentially exposed to porn and other types of harmful content,' wrote Melanie Dawes, Ofcom's chief executive, in January. The UK is not an outlier in its desire to keep children safe, either. Texas and three other US states require age verification for adult material, and so will Australia. But critics of the law have warned of consequences for free expression from the start, and over-zealous interpretations quickly became apparent. X, previously Twitter, has already put material behind the age gate, with Benjamin Jones, director of case management at the Free Speech Union – of which I am a member – identifying a number of posts which were worryingly censored for unverified users. Some supported calls for single-sex spaces for women. One by Wuhan lab researcher Billy Bostickson (a pseudonym) fell foul too; it was part of a thread on the use of bamboo RNA in vaccines. Several posts in a thread discussing Richard the Lionheart were gated, which merely contained a reference to the crusades. Most troublingly, a post linking to a live stream of police arrests at a demonstration at a migrant hotel in Leeds was also taken down. All these bans appear to have been the work of an over-zealous algorithm. Some saw this coming. Baroness Claire Fox has written of her dismay at realising how outnumbered speech advocates were when she was in a room as the only free speech advocate, alongside dozens of groups all requesting some clause or addition. 'Only two of us [peers] consistently opposed the bill – myself and Lord Daniel Moylan. I was shocked that so many from the free speech camp of peers were silent,' Fox tells me. 'It became a Christmas tree bill with lots of other things put in it,' said Kemi Badenoch as she campaigned for the Conservative leadership last year. She also predicted 'it will go after people who aren't doing anything wrong'. That hasn't quite happened yet, but long overdue moves to enforce accountability on giant, transnational platforms, and better protect children unfortunately coincided with a renewed desire to control political speech. The good state must take an active role in removing inflammatory speech, the United Nations declared in its 2021 paper Our Common Agenda. It re-emphasised the point last year. William Perrin, one of the architects of Ofcom's approach to regulating online platforms, who was not involved in drafting the legislation, recently posted a paper for the think tank Demos called Epistemic Security 2029: Protecting the UK's information supply chains and strengthening discourse for the next political era. It explicitly calls for the policing of social media platforms. One gets the sense that as long as populists are rising, the impulse to censor will be irresistible to their political opponents. By controlling our discourse, they can control democracy. 'We have an establishment that is innately hostile to Free Speech,' Jones of the Free Speech Union tells me. There is very much wrong with this. Against a backdrop of widespread concern about street crime, shoplifting and rampant fraud, the energy devoted by police to what we say online is confounding, from enthusiasm for the category of 'non-crime hate incidents' to the creation of a special monitoring unit. The implicit idea seems to be that if we stop talking about something the underlying problem will go away. With Britain a tinderbox, and a long summer ahead, this seems a brave moment to test the proposition. It is understandable why age verification and clumsy algorithms sow suspicion of the system itself. In reality, however, online anonymity was always illusory. Your broadband operator has always known who you are and which sites you visit. So has the shady VPN provider. Google collected your pornography browsing history even while you were browsing in 'incognito' mode, for which it was sued, agreeing later to delete billions of records in a settlement. What our alarm reflects is a wholesale loss of trust in the Government. Ofcom points to polling showing the Online Safety Act is widely supported. It is highly regrettable that a bien-pensant blob has cynically hijacked child protection law to ensure it has a media landscape more in keeping with its views. But there's plenty of blame to go around. One lesson of the Online Safety Act is that free-speech advocates also needed a plausible child protection plan. They never came up with one – and were duly steamrollered. The consequences for Britain may be profound.

Rochdale grooming gang ringleaders could be deported 'in months' as Pakistan signals it's FINALLY willing to accept pair after years' refusals
Rochdale grooming gang ringleaders could be deported 'in months' as Pakistan signals it's FINALLY willing to accept pair after years' refusals

Daily Mail​

time10 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

Rochdale grooming gang ringleaders could be deported 'in months' as Pakistan signals it's FINALLY willing to accept pair after years' refusals

Two Rochdale grooming gang ringleaders could finally be deported to Pakistan by the end of this year, officials there have revealed - after a decade's delay. British officials have been trying to deport Qari Abdul Rauf, 55, and Adil Khan, 54, following their leading roles in the grooming gangs scandal. The UK this month dropped a ban on direct flights between the two countries dating back five years yet still the two men have remained in the Greater Manchester town. But after Pakistan's government was believed to have used the pair's detention as a 'bargaining chip', there are suggestions now they could take the men back. That would be in return for Britain's decision to lift a previous five-year ban on Pakistani International Airlines. A senior Pakistani government official involved in talks on Rauf and Khan has now indicated his nation's interior ministry must now give legal clearance for their return. He was quoted by the Times as saying: 'I believe a resolution could be reached within a month or two, although there are some legal and political complexities involved. 'Currently, the case is being handled by Pakistan's interior ministry. Once they provide clearance, it will be passed to the foreign ministry, which will finalise the acceptance of Rauf and Khan.' The two groomers were at the heart of a child abuse ring where girls as young as 12 were groomed with free booze and drugs before being gang-raped. They held dual British-Pakistani citizenship but were stripped of their British nationality when they were convicted and jailed in 2012. Both men then renounced their Pakistani citizenship, in a cynical move that made them stateless and consequently much trickier to deport due to international law. In 2022, they both lost an appeal against deportation after a seven-year legal battle that cost the British taxpayer a fortune, but they kept living in Rochdale because Pakistan would not take them back. But Islamabad's position could now change, according to reports, now that UK ministers have given the green light for direct flights to resume between the two countries. The country's national carrier PIA was barred from operating inside the EU and UK in 2020. That followed an incident on May 22 that year when a passenger flight from Lahore to Karachi crashed, killing 97 out of the 99 people on board as well as an additional victim on the ground. Married father-of-five Rauf, a religious studies teacher at a Rochdale mosque, would drive schoolgirls to other men who would rape and abuse them. He walked free in 2014 after serving just two and a half years of a six-year prison sentence. Last month, the Daily Mail revealed how he built a house in his native Pakistan – despite receiving £285,000 of taxpayers' money in a battle against being deported, casting fresh doubts on claims he had cut ties with Pakistan. Khan was convicted of sex trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child. The offender, who had a baby with one of the victims aged just 13 at the time, served four years of an eight-year jail term before being released in 2016. Rauf ferried victims from Rochdale to sex parties as far away as Leeds and Bradford, in a scandal that ultimately led to nine men being convicted for trafficking and abusing almost 50 girls. Officials in Islamabad last month told the Times that Pakistan could finally agree to take the two men once direct flights are resumed. And the British High Commission in Pakistan subsequently confirmed PIA was once again legally allowed to fly non-stop routes into the UK. A spokesperson said: 'After a sustained, independent and technically driven process, the UK's Air Safety Committee has lifted its restrictions on Pakistani carriers. 'It will take time for flights to resume, but this is an important step, and a testament to Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority's air safety improvements. 'Individual airline carriers will still need to apply for permits to operate to the UK through the UK Civil Aviation Authority.' Jane Marriott, the UK high commissioner to Pakistan, added at the time: 'I'm grateful to aviation experts in the UK and Pakistan for their collaborative work to drive improvements to meet international safety standards. 'While it will take time for flights to resume, once the logistics are in place, I look forward to using a Pakistani carrier when visiting family and friends.' An estimated 1.6million people of Pakistani heritage are believed to be living in the UK. Paul Waugh, Labour MP for Rochdale, has now said following the latest reported progress: 'Ever since I was elected, I have been working constantly with ministers to deport these Rochdale grooming gang ringleaders to Pakistan. 'The last government failed to boot these vile paedophiles out of Britain. That's totally unacceptable to me, to the people of Rochdale and most of all to their victims. 'I know that we are having to deal with a complex diplomatic and legal process, but I've ensured this is a high priority within government and I'm encouraged that progress sounds like it is being made. The sooner we see the back of them, the better.' Earlier this year, MailOnline revealed that Rauf was working in Rochdale as a delivery driver, prompting fears he might meet one of his victims during the course of his work. His neighbours in Rochdale were disgusted that he was still allowed to live in the same town where he carried out his vile crimes. One mother, who lives just a few doors away, said: 'Nobody can believe that monster is still here, after what he did to those young girls. 'It's disgusting. What is the country coming to? Why is he still here?' And furious neighbours of Rauf in Rochdale described how they were terrified to let their children out of sight after the 55-year-old was released. The convicted paedophile was told he would be deported back to Pakistan after completing his sentence in 2014 - but he remains living in the Greater Manchester town more than a decade later. Rauf claims to be stateless after renouncing his Pakistani nationality – however, his claim to have cut ties have now been thrown into doubt. Neighbours in the remote village which he left to move to Britain in the 1990s have revealed that the father-of-five has built a house there. They said his intention was to live in it when he is finally kicked out of the UK. They also contradicted his claim during his battle against deportation that he would be at risk in Pakistan due to 'public opinion' because of his convictions, saying his family remains 'influential' there. Rauf was one of a nine-strong gang of Asian men who sexually assaulted 47 girls, some as young as 12, after plying them with drink and drugs. Their conviction in 2012 shocked the country and sparked years of campaigning by victims, which earlier this month finally prompted Sir Keir Starmer to agree to a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal. Rauf – who moved to the UK in 1997 – lost an appeal against being stripped of British nationality in 2018. But he appealed against deportation on the grounds he had already renounced his Pakistani citizenship and would therefore be rendered stateless. Rauf has received a staggering £285,000 in legal aid as he bids to avoid being thrown out of the country, it emerged earlier this year. Despite losing the case, he remains in Rochdale where he works as a takeaway delivery driver as Pakistan won't accept him without valid travel documents. But inquiries by MailOnline in his home village of Charhoi in Pakistan-administered Kashmir suggest he has retained close links. According to villagers who know the family, he has sent back money to fund the construction of a new house near the bazaar with the intention of living there himself. They said he initially allowed his elder brother to live there with his family – but had now asked him to vacate the building. 'His brother lived there for few months but came back to his old home when his children told him to leave Abdul Rauf's home and go back to his old one,' the resident said. As part of his 2022 appeal against deportation, Rauf claimed that if he was sent back to Pakistan, he 'would be at risk due to the public opinion of the criminal conviction' and would not be 'protected' by the authorities there. But a villager cast doubt on his claim, saying that while locals knew about the case, he would be safe as a result of his family ties. 'Since they are influential and financially strong people in their street, this topic was not much discussed,' the resident said. Before his conviction, Rauf was seen as a pillar of Rochdale's Muslim community because of his role as a 'qari', a cleric who reads from the Koran. But the men's trial heard how he trafficked a 15-year-old girl for sex, driving her to secluded areas to have sex with her in his taxi and ferrying her to a flat in Rochdale where he and others had sex with her.

Paedophile who groomed young boys in Accrington jailed
Paedophile who groomed young boys in Accrington jailed

BBC News

time10 hours ago

  • BBC News

Paedophile who groomed young boys in Accrington jailed

A paedophile has been jailed after perpetrating serious sexual offences against a six-year-old boy and an eight-year-old Thomson groomed the two young victims in the Accrington area, attempted to rape them and carried out multiple sexual assaults against them, Lancashire Police the 53-year-old was arrested, two previous victims came forward to say they had also been sexually assaulted when they were between eight and 10 years old, the force said, having been befriended by Thomson when he was in his late teens/early 20s and they were still at school. Thomson, of Bawdlands, Clitheroe, was jailed for 24 years at Burnley Crown Court after admitting child sexual offences. 'Manipulative sexual deviant' He had earlier pleaded guilty to the attempted rape of a child under 13, causing/inciting a boy under 13 to engage in sexual activity, and engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a had forced the victims to watch him perform lewd acts on himself, telling them not to tell anyone about what he was doing "or it will be bad luck in life", police Con Hannah Blundel said: "Thomson is a manipulative sexual deviant who carried out unspeakable sexual crimes against two vulnerable boys. "This is some of the worst sexual offending I have seen in my career and I welcome the significant sentence Thomson has received, which reflects the very real danger he poses to all male children."I want to praise the victims for their bravery in coming forward, though they may not fully understand what happened to them or why." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.

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