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The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
Thousands of reports of abuse have been made in Australian childcare centres. Most alleged perpetrators were allowed to keep working
Angela* was cuddling her daughter in bed one afternoon when the then two-year-old said something she had never heard before. 'Kiss my bum?' she asked, lifting her bottom up. 'Don't be silly, I am not going to kiss your bum,' Angela said gently, kissing her own hand to transfer a kiss to the side of her daughter's bottom cheek. She then asked why her daughter had asked this. Her daughter told her a male educator at the childcare centre she attended had kissed her private parts while changing her nappy. The next day, Angela says, her daughter disclosed further allegations of sexual abuse and again named the educator. A medical assessment added weight to Angela's worst fear: that she had been the subject of repeated sexual abuse at the centre. Angela acted swiftly. She spoke to police, a GP, a mental health social worker, the childcare centre, and private and public sector investigators. She was confident her daughter's disclosure – supported by clinical notes showing the child had named the worker in the presence of a doctor before being urgently referred to a specialist – would be sufficient to have the educator removed from the system. But what followed has exposed the shocking shortcomings in Australia's childcare system that see hundreds of complaints about sexual misconduct by childcare workers ultimately dismissed, and regulators unwilling or unable to take action against alleged perpetrators if police decline to prosecute a criminal case. After three separate investigations – a preliminary police investigation that stalled because Angela's daughter was not comfortable giving an official statement to officers, as well as one by a workplace relations firm and the other by the Victorian education department – the conclusion was reached that there was insufficient evidence to remove the educator from his role. The complaint was, according to Victoria's reportable conduct scheme, 'unsubstantiated – insufficient evidence'. While the term appears to diminish the claim, technically the finding meant 'there was significant strong evidence that supports the allegation, but the evidence falls short of being able to make a substantiated finding'. Without corroborating images, footage or another witness, the disclosure of a two-year-old to her mother – supported by a letter from mental health professional describing her symptoms as 'consistent with sexual assault victims' – was not enough. This leaves the worker still employed, hundreds more children potentially at risk from a suspected paedophile and the family deeply troubled by the lack of action. Angela's experience is an almost textbook example of one of the major failings afflicting the childcare system: an opaque, inconsistent, underfunded and often ineffective regulatory system. The federal government has rushed to act on children's safety in childcare services after the harrowing allegations of sexual abuse by a childcare worker in Melbourne, using the first week of the new term of parliament to introduce legislation that would allow it to strip funding from failing childcare services and conduct spot checks of centres. But experts have told Guardian Australia the problems run far deeper, and that the government risks introducing what amount to 'reactive strategies' that won't address the real problems. They say that when complaints and allegations are made, they are assessed by state regulatory bodies beset with 'irregularities and inconsistencies' when it comes to how they investigate and how they report allegations. These bodies appear to be hamstrung in taking action against individual workers if the police decide there is not enough evidence to criminally prosecute. Sign up: AU Breaking News email When one mother in the Northern Territory arrived at her child's daycare centre to pick them up at the end of the day, she saw her three-year-old – through gaps in a fence – in an outdoor area. The child was standing between the legs of a seated male educator she had never seen before, who was rubbing the child's backside with his hands, according to a statement she would give to NT police, a redacted version of which has been seen by Guardian Australia. The mother immediately reported the incident to the centre and to police. NT police investigated but, according to their record of investigation, released under freedom of information laws, because there were no other witnesses and no CCTV footage, police concluded there was 'not enough evidence' to prosecute and so declined to pursue charges. The early childhood education and care regulator for the territory – the Quality Education and Care Northern Territory (QECNT) – also launched an investigation. But ultimately QECNT concluded: 'As police are not pursuing [the] matter, that QECNT could not take any further action, as there had been nothing to indicate the service should have taken a different course of action.' Because the centre had not breached any rules in relation to the allegation or its handling of it, and police weren't prosecuting the individual, there was no action the QECNT could take against him. The educator was a casual worker who had been placed in the centre by a temp agency. In the QECNT's log of the steps it took as part of its investigation, it noted that after the accused casual educator heard that police were closing the investigation, he had 'phoned to state he has been cleared and requested to come back to work'. The log contains a summary of a conversation between the educator and someone, whose name is redacted but appears to be an employee of the temp agency, saying: 'There have been some services that have requested he don't come back and she can't place him in those services … She indicated he may want to seek employment directly from a service' and that she would 'keep him on the 'books'.' The case highlights an issue that experts say is of key concern when it comes to regulating childcare services: there is little that can be done about educators who are accused of serious incidents, including sexual abuse, but whom police do not prosecute. While an individual daycare centre might then request that a casual worker not come back for any shifts, or bar them from working there, there is nothing to stop the educator from finding employment at another centre, nor any record that the individual has been suspended from or asked not to return to a previous place of employment. This is not a new problem. For years key players in the sector have flagged that childcare services have no way to act on, or keep records of, 'unsubstantiated' complaints. In late 2023 the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (Acecqa) conducted a review into the regulatory system. It found that such cases often came down to 'a child's word against an educator['s]'. 'This often leads to unsubstantiated claims, where no further action is taken,' Acecqa said in its report to state and territory ministers. It said these individual workers, who could be deemed as 'persons of interest', provide a 'unique challenge' from a regulatory monitoring point of view, because the sector doesn't have a clear system for tracking them. '[Childcare services] have no way to share this information with another Approved Provider considering employing that person unless they are contacted as a referee,' it said. The federal education minister, Jason Clare, ordered the review in the wake of charges against Ashley Paul Griffith, now known as Australia's worst paedophile. Griffith was found guilty last year of abusing 73 girls while working in childcare in Brisbane and Italy over two decades. Griffith had also been the subject of previous allegations – one more than a decade before his arrest. One Brisbane mother claimed that in 2009 she went to police to report allegations that Griffith had sexually abused her son but they had not investigated. She told the Nine Network's A Current Affair that her four-year-old son had told her 'Ashley hurt me' and went into graphic detail about the alleged sexual abuse. She took her son to a police station but claims officers only spoke to the boy for a few minutes, did not attempt to build rapport with him and, when he didn't disclose the abuse to them during the brief interview, says she was 'advised that there was nothing to warrant further investigation, and it was over'. 'We left the police station feeling bewildered, disbelieved and possibly crazy.' She told A Current Affair: 'We tried so many years ago to make it known that Ashley Griffith is a dangerous paedophile – no one listened, no one cared.' A report into Griffith by the Queensland Child Death Review Board released this month found that concerns about reputation or legal risks may deter individuals from raising concerns within the childcare sector. The inquiry also found that more than one complaint was made about Griffith to his employers, the Early Childhood Regulatory Authority and the Queensland police, before his arrest. 'Of these complaints, the available information suggests they were not always progressed, and information was not shared between agencies,' the inquiry's interim report said. 'Prior complaints made to QPS did not proceed to prosecution.' This meant that until Griffith's arrest, there was nothing to stop him maintaining his Blue Card – Queensland's working with children check. In its report to ministers, Acecqa recommended the government establish a centralised mechanism for sharing intelligence and keeping records so they could 'monitor and respond to suspected misconduct and allegations about a 'person of interest' who has unsubstantiated allegations'. But these warnings – and the same recommendations – have been sounded before. Almost a decade ago the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse noted that the inability to share information can enable perpetrators 'to move between institutions and jurisdictions and pose ongoing risks to children'. It too made recommendations to ensure better information sharing, and for a consistent national approach for sectors including childcare, backed by legislation, to ensure children were protected. Similarly, the 2021 Tasmanian commission of inquiry highlighted concerns that individuals feared breaching privacy laws when sharing information about alleged abusers, while noting the need to collate information regarding all allegations and incidents of sexual misconduct – even if unsubstantiated. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Anne Hollonds, the national children's commissioner, says the federal government's proposal for a national register of childcare workers was an opportunity to address this enormous gap. But she argues that in developing the register, the government should consider whether it contains records of all serious allegations, substantiated or not. She acknowledges there are serious privacy and legal issues that need to be resolved before including unsubstantiated allegations on a national register, but also says it's an important way to identify a pattern of concerning behaviour. 'I think intuitively what I would say is that there should be a record … of reportable matters, whether substantiated or not. 'And I say that because it's when you look back on cases like the Ashley Griffith one that you see, maybe three reportable matters that were unable to be substantiated, maybe that's a sign of something, a pattern of behaviour, potentially. 'So then the question is: proactively, should we set the bar at a level that allows us to pick up a pattern in real time, even if not substantiated? ... I'm asking that question. I don't know the answer. I think that needs to be considered. 'Given the difficulty of substantiation with non-verbal or barely verbal children, then what other measures should we have in place that are able to pick up a pattern of behaviour that might, in its quantum, be a sufficient cause for concern?' Hollonds says that assessment of who is suitable to care for children 'shouldn't just rely on the working with children's check'. 'If we are prioritising the best interests of children … then we have to really address any barriers … for providers to be able to employ people who have a clean record, or to exclude those who don't,' which she says goes beyond people with criminal convictions. One mother who is all too familiar with the fact that a police conviction is not always possible is Jennifer*. When she went to police to report that her then two-year-old daughter, Ava*, had disclosed she was sexually abused while at daycare, police repeatedly warned her that getting a conviction, or even laying charges against the alleged offender, was highly unlikely. The alleged offending occurred at a family daycare – a service run by an individual in their home, but which still receives the federal childcare subsidy – and the alleged offender was the partner of the woman running the service. Jennifer says she had no idea a man was living at the house where the children were cared for until Ava started talking about him. Eventually, Ava disclosed that the man had exposed himself to her and touched her private parts, Jennifer says. New South Wales police took statements from Ava and her parents and investigated. The Department of Education and the Department of Communities and Justice also investigated the allegations – but no charges were laid. In a summary of its findings, the education department wrote: 'There was insufficient evidence to substantiate a breach of the National Law and Regulations. Insufficient evidence to determine [the alleged offender] posed a risk to children. No further action was taken by the department. The case was closed.' No action was taken against the man or the service, which is still operating, though Guardian Australia has not been able to confirm whether the man is still living at the premises. Jennifer would like to see reform to the way investigations into those working with children – or in close proximity to them – are undertaken, saying that the education department should be able to take some action against people who have had credible allegations made against them, even if the level of proof does not reach that required for a criminal conviction. 'That's a hard one because, you know, you don't want innocent people to be punished,' she says. '[But] the level of evidence required for a conviction in court is so high; for beyond reasonable doubt. And when you've got no physical evidence and you've got the words of the two-year-olds, it's not going to stand up in court.' When a report of a serious incident such as physical or sexual abuse is made against a childcare worker, multiple agencies swing – or should swing – into action. If criminal activity is alleged, police might investigate. The relevant state or territory regulator, often housed within the state's education department, will also receive a report. But data obtained by Guardian Australia through freedom of information laws show that responses and record-keeping vary wildly across the country. Some jurisdictions, such as the NT, recorded just one or two reports of sexual abuse of a child in a childcare setting a year. Others, such as NSW, didn't separate out allegations of physical assaults and sexual abuse and so came back with hundreds. The responses also revealed that in the some states, in the vast majority of cases where allegations of physical and sexual assault of a child are reported and investigated, no action is taken by the regulator. In one state – South Australia – nearly 60% of the 147 reports of physical and sexual abuse of a child by a childcare worker from January 2020 until 31 October 2024 were not investigated by the regulator. It did not issue a single compliance notice (the strongest penalty which can include suspending a centre's right to operate or prohibiting a educator from working) for sexual or physical abuse of children in the nearly five years. NSW had the highest number of reports of physical and sexual abuse of children in childcare centres to the state regulator, by a large margin, with, 1,856 incidents reported from 2020 until 31 October 2024. Investigations were launched into all of the incidents of alleged physical and sexual abuse reported to it. In 1,312 cases (70%), the investigation was completed and 'no further action' was taken. In 13% of cases (244) administrative compliance action was taken, and in 180 cases (9.5%) statutory compliance action was taken. Other incidents were under investigation or handled in another case. A spokesperson for the NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority said: 'We work closely with law enforcement and other agencies where required to support investigations. If a police investigation does not result in charges, we still conduct our own investigation and take strong action in line with the provisions of the National Law and Regulations.' The authority can bring prosecutions, and since 2021, it has prosecuted 34 providers, nominated supervisors and individuals, resulting in fines and conditional release, though none of these were in relation to sexual abuse allegations. 'I think one of the problems is we have a national quality framework and we're meant to have a nationally consistent approach … But because individual jurisdictions handle the monitoring and assessment of services, there are irregularities and inconsistencies across the country,' says Prof Marianne Fenech, an early childhood expert from the University of Sydney. Fenech says investment in quality education, including improving staffing levels and pay, and reducing the number of casual workers, was the hard work that needed to be done to improve the childcare industry, rather than the 'reactive strategies' of CCTV and a national register that the government has suggested. 'If we just focus on reactive strategies to safety, we're missing the point and we're not going to deal with the bigger issues that are causing the safety problems in the first instance,' she says. Hollonds says in the last few weeks, as discussions have raged about safety in childcares and the government has introduced its new legislation, difficult conversations about reforming a huge, complicated industry are being had. But in many ways, this is all happening far too late, she says. 'Everyone is looking for answers. [But] it is a concern to me that we didn't work on these much earlier. 'These questions that you're asking me now, they are fundamental questions that go to the strength of the child safeguarding scaffolding underpinning the industry. And really, this should have been worked on many, many years ago … if not before then certainly the Ashley Griffith episode should have been the trigger for very proactive work on the regulatory system, making sure the regulators had the powers and the resources to do their job well, as well as all of these other elements that are being looked at now. 'I really don't understand why we've had to wait so long … before we acted.' *Names have been changed In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helpline International
The Herald
23-07-2025
- The Herald
Search for pregnant Knysna woman ends in chilling discovery
News Premium By Siphokazi Mnyobe - 23 July 2025 The bloodied body of a pregnant Knysna woman has been discovered in the shack of her former lover, who is believed to have taken his own life, police in the Garden Route town have confirmed. Police, who had accompanied a social worker, made the grim discovery in Flenter Location on Friday, after searching for Siphokazi Ngwendu, 31, who had missed an appointment with a counsellor...
The Herald
21-07-2025
- The Herald
Knysna police probe suspected murder-suicide
Knysna police are investigating a suspected murder-suicide after a man and a woman were found dead in a house in Flenter Location. Police spokesperson Sergeant Christopher Spies said at about 4pm on Friday, a police officer accompanied a social worker to visit a woman at the house. 'On arrival, the police member forced the door of the residence open. 'They discovered the body of the woman, aged 31, with multiple stab wounds, on the bed. 'The body of a man, aged 37, was found with a rope around his neck. 'Both were declared dead by medical personnel on the scene.' Spies said it was believed the two had been in a relationship. The matter is under investigation. The Herald
ABC News
07-07-2025
- ABC News
Child safety officer did not speak to teen ahead of Cairns car crash death, inquest told
The child safety team responsible for a teenage boy who died while riding in a stolen car in Queensland did not speak to him in the six months before the incident, an inquest has been told. Warning: This story contains references to alleged child sexual abuse and self-harm. The 14-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was killed in a car crash in the early hours of February 14, 2022. The coronial inquest into his death is examining the appropriateness of child safety support and residential placements, the adequacy of police training and whether officers followed operational policies and procedures. On Monday a supervisor from the Cairns branch of the Department of Child Safety was asked why the safety officer assigned to the boy had not spoken to him after August 2021. The supervisor said she was not aware that was the case and was under the impression more regular conversations had been taking place. The boy had also been placed in a "high-intensity team" with a worker who had fewer children to manage. But the court was told the officer relied on a social worker, whose employment was outsourced by the department, to maintain contact with the boy. When asked whether that was appropriate for the officer employed by the department the supervisor said, "I would have hoped that she would have made attempts". The court was told the boy was 10 when his mother took her own life and that his father died of a drug overdose three years later. The boy's aunt and uncle, who gave evidence separately on Friday, told the inquest they were in the process of trying to secure guardianship of the boy. But they said there was a lack of communication and support from Department of Child Safety staff and confusion about the process. They also said they had concerns for the teenager's safety and mental health while he was in care because he had called them multiple times while in a state of distress. His aunt said she did not hear back from Cairns social workers after sending them police-check documentation as part of the application for the boy to live in her care. "My phone calls and messages weren't really answered," she said. The woman also addressed earlier testimony from another witness that it took nine attempts for a child to see a psychologist, but he only went once. "What about attempt 12 and 15 and 17? What about those attempts?" she said. The boy had been diagnosed with an intellectual disability and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and was suspected to have had post-traumatic stress disorder and autism spectrum disorder. "We cannot give up on vulnerable youth and people with disabilities … those disabilities were going to affect his decision-making for the rest of his life — forever," she said. The boy's uncle said he travelled to Cairns multiple times after his brother's death and he had meetings with the boy, social workers and police. Under questioning he told the court the child made allegations that he had been sexually abused while in care. "He rang me about two o'clock in the morning, crying, that things were happening to him," he said. The uncle told the court he and the boy's father were sexually abused while in care, which the boy was aware of. "He basically came and said, 'You know what you and dad talked about, what happened to you when you were in the homes? it's happening to me,'" he said. The uncle told the court he then flew to Cairns and took the boy to lodge a complaint with police, but the child he did not want to pursue the matter and it was dropped.
Khaleej Times
03-07-2025
- Khaleej Times
Dubai: 10-year-old reports abusive father through smart app, police take action
A 10-year-old used the Dubai Police smart app to report his abusive father for excessive cruelty. His action prompted quick intervention by the Child and Women Protection Department. The boy, identified only as A.A, said he was repeatedly beaten up by his father, unlike his younger siblings. The beatings left visible bruises on his body, which he tried to hide from classmates. His performance in school also began to decline, drawing concern from his school's administration and social worker. The school contacted Dubai Police after the social worker noticed bruises on the child's body and signs of emotional distress. According to Lieutenant Colonel Dr Ali Al Matrooshi, Director of the Child and Women Protection Department, the boy was initially too afraid to speak out, fearing more punishment at home. Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels. School social worker intervened "The school social worker built trust with the child and encouraged him to use the police smart app," said Al Matrooshi. "Once the report was submitted, we were able to intervene immediately." Dubai Police summoned the father, who admitted to beating his son but said he did not intend to cause harm. According to Al Matrooshi, the father explained that he was following the parenting style he had experienced himself, believing that it would toughen up his son. "He thought harsh discipline would raise a strong child, but what it caused instead was trauma and social withdrawal," said Al Matrooshi. "This type of behaviour is unacceptable and punishable by law." Police say the father pledged to change his parenting approach. Legal action will be taken where appropriate, and the child will continue receiving psychological and social support, with follow-ups to ensure his well-being. Wadeema law Authorities emphasised the importance of early reporting in such cases and reminded residents that children's rights are protected under the UAE's Child Protection Law. Incidents can be reported confidentially via the Dubai Police smart app and website, by calling 901, or by visiting the Child Oasis at the Dubai Police headquarters in Al Twar. The UAE implemented a comprehensive child protection law to safeguard the rights and well-being of children living in the country. The Federal Law, known as the Wadeema's Law, is the cornerstone of child protection in the country. Named after a tragic case involving child abuse, the law aims to ensure children's safety, welfare, and development. In 2012, a girl named Wadeema was abused and killed by her father; the incident shook the consciousness of the nation. The leadership launched a legal workshop that led to the introduction of Wadeema's Law in 2016.
