BONUS: Keeping kids safe from predators in childcare: Andrew Carpenter

Andrew Carpenter is a lawyer and a strong advocate for victim-survivors of child abuse. He and Gary sit down to talk about what needs to change to make childcare safer for our kids.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see aside of life the average person is never
exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.

(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.

(00:46):
This is another bonus episode of I Catch Killers, and
we're going to be talking to one of the most
hated people in this country. Now that's not a very
flattering label, but when the people who hate you are
those who sexually abuse children, I reckon and that's something
you should be very proud of. Today we're sitting down
with South Australian solicitor Andrew Carpenter. We're going to talk

(01:07):
to Andrew about the sexual abuse of children in daycare centers.
I wanted to get Andrew's take on this hideous crime
and how he reckons it could be prevented. I think
this is a worthwhile discussion. Andrew Carpenter. It's good to
see you.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Thanks for having me again. Is this a third time?
I think Hall of Fame appearance worthy?

Speaker 1 (01:28):
It could be something. Definitely, it's worthwhile striving for more
appearances on my catch killers so better. And it's also
good to see that you're still You've still got the
passion and the anger about chasing down people responsible for
the sexual abuse of children.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's never stopped. In the fact I've got children of
mine now, it's religious intensifying it, especially young ones in
not only primary school but wholdcare centers. It when it's
something like this, when you know how rotten it's been
for years, it's something that hits home and it definitely
is stepped up my desire to fight the good fight.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
It becomes a little bit more personal. I suppose when
you're sending you young young child off to a childcarese
and the thinking they're going to be safe.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, it really it makes you you put everything into
perspective like you would be the same. When you're a
police officer, you see crimes happening, but when you see
it from the front and you've got children of your own,
you go, hang on, if I can protect my children
and their friends from anything like this, why wouldn't I?
And I've got a decent platform that I use, and
I've obviously I've never been a bit survivor, It's never
happened to me. But having children of your own and

(02:34):
bringing them into the big scary world, it's important that
every parent uses their best resources available to make sure
that their kids' lives are better than theirs.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, it seems like a no brainer. Now, the people
that don't know who you are hadn't heard your previous
episodes on I Catch Killers. You're a solicitor from South Australia.
I first met you when we were doing the Predatory
podcast with Madeline West, which was focusing on child sexual abuse.

(03:05):
How did you become so involved in your activities, campaigning
and your activism for stopping this horrendous crime.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
So my first law firm job was when you start
any industry, whether it's a trade or anything, they give
you the work that no one else wants to do,
and they gave me a file of a brave survivor
of child sexual abuse and no one wanted to touch it.
And then I end up winning. The action was one
of the first ones I've ever won, and I just
realized how stacked the odds are against these victor survivors,

(03:37):
with time periods and holes in reporting, and how rare
it is to secure a conviction. And I've started that
back in about twenty eleven, and then when I had
Children of Mind in twenty nineteen. It was the first
day of dropping my oldest life at childcare in twenty
twenty that I've realized, hang on, I know how bad

(03:58):
the odds are. I know how bad this is. What
can I do to try to coil this from happening?
And that's when my mum, who would always talk about
the compensation from cirpinuation that the liberals had an idea
about it in twenty eighteen, I thought, hang on, well,
if I could use that and strengthen that and give
a voice to it, why wouldn't I Because the conviction

(04:19):
rate is appalling, and most people in this day and
age they think about financial penalties. I'm not using my
phone in the car, not because I'm worried about demerit points.
I don't want a two thousand dollars fine, and we're
not seeing adequate deterrences with this, so I thought, hey,
on financial deterrence is key, So why don't we throw
everything we can at not dealing with things after the fact,

(04:39):
but actually preventing these horrific crimes from occurring. And that's
why I started the Servier Survivors campaign. And I like
to say I'm not outspoken, but I like to say
I fight the good fight, and whenever something happens, I
use my platform to highlight the risks for parents, highlight
the stats, and just to show what to look for
in any change of behavior of children.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay, and on that I liked. I really liked when
you first raised it. When we first start speaking about that,
the forfeiture of the superannuation, Can you just explain that
briefly to what you're talking about because people that hadn't
picked up on what you're campaigning about.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Sure, so anyone that has worked since nineteen eighty seven
will have superannuation. It's just it's an employee entitlement that
everyone has. But what happens when people are sued for
child sexual offending, what they will do is they would
sell their property and they will try and pump all
their money into their lawyer's trust account or into their
supernuation and declared bankruptcy. So the prime example which happened
recently was an AFL player named Barry Cable who had

(05:40):
his legend status revoked the day before his civil trial.
He declared bankruptcy and so any compensation the awarded by
ZICNA survivors couldn't be realized. But he's got money in superannuation,
so you can effectively protect that asset which is free
from bankruptcy, which cannot be taken. I'm trying to say,
hang on, why don't we do it for fraudsters? We say,

(06:03):
hang on, let's just reverse transactions and go after that
for them. Why can't we do it for the most
prolific crime, which happens to one and three girls and
one in five boys. By saying, if you have money
in super we're going to use that to not only
deter offending, but adequately commensate victim survivors. Because right now,
the taxpayer is effectively indemnifying child sex offenders for their crimes.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Well, I think that there's a lot of merits merit
for it, and the deterrent is a big thing if
you're looking at you build up your superannuation over the years.
If you've committed these heenious crimes in the past, and
the past comes back to haunt you, you don't walk
away with the financial security considering the damage that it's

(06:47):
done too. And I think you have an understanding of
that dealing with the clients that you've dealt with the
damage that he's done. When people are abused as children.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh well, you hear about criminals getting suspended sentence or
home detention. There's no suspended sentence or released from good
behavior for victims survivors. They're adequately they're effectively dealt a
life sentence for what's happened to them. And the most
discussing thing about it is there was a report from
doctor Judy Curtain that said, for every one thousand reports

(07:16):
of child sexual abuse, only one hundred are investigated by
police and three are convictors. So that's the point zero
zero three percent conviction rate per one thousand reports. Now,
out of fourteen years in this area, I could probably
count maybe no more than ten to fifteen people that
I've sued in one that actually have had a criminal conviction.
Most settle without convictions whatsoever. And this isn't a problem

(07:39):
you can arrest out of. And if I touched earlier,
it's one in three girls and one in five boys
will be sexually abused of all their eighteenth birthday. And
to put that into real world statistics, if you look
at an average thirty class, a thirty student classroom, statistically
five girls and three boys out of that class will
be abused. So next time you drop kids off, just

(08:01):
count eight out of thirty and that's when you go, Okay,
this is a real problem, and not one of those children,
if they come forward, will likely have a conviction. So
a lot of law changes are aimed at after the fact,
whether it's like Harrison James spoke about your podcast see
your reference that relevant change the legislation. But my thing

(08:24):
is to deter it from ever happening. If you can
tell people up front, hey, you're probably not going to
get convicted of this, but you're going to lose everything,
most people will actually stop and think and think, you know,
I don't want that.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, well, I think everything that you say there makes
a lot of sense. It makes too much sense, and
it's confusing why we don't really go along those lines
and look at preventing these crimes. But I think what
establishes how a passion that you are about preventing this
evense and reducing it. You know, it's all very well

(08:59):
to people after the offense has happened, but the damage
has invariably been done. And what brings us to the
table today talking There's been in recent times a lot
of talk about child sexual abuse cases in childcare centers,
significantly one in Queensland, a horrific one in Queensland and

(09:20):
a horrific one more recently in Victoria, and that's drawn
the attention to the public going how did this occur?
What can you tell us about those two high profile cases?

Speaker 2 (09:33):
So they're quite different in character. For instance, I applaud
the Victorian police. So as soon as they uncovered the
alleged offender in Victoria, they identified twenty four centers where
our crimes have been alleged to have occurred. They notified
thousands of parents and students as to what centers, a

(09:57):
time frame in which the alleged offender was working, and
they got on the front foot and they got twelve
hundred children to get SDI checks. They set up hotlines
for individuals so that the police in Victoria have been
great coming to the front foot and speaking to people.
But if you look what happened in Queensland with mister Griffith,

(10:18):
there was two years after he was arrested until the
public knew about it, two years after the fact, until
people knew what was actually happening. But the hardest thing
with that is that the public still doesn't know what
centers this offender went to. And we're talking about almost
three thousand accounts at the start. I think they whittled
it down to about fifteen hundred, but it was seventy
three children he was found or he pled guilty to abusing.

(10:42):
But the public still does not know which center he went,
he worked, at what time frame this occurred. And so
there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of other students
out there that have been impacted by this individual in
Queensland that will never be known to life because we
know what a child who is between the ages of
two and fours, Like I asked my oldest son who's

(11:05):
five today, if he remembers a child that he went
through preschool, toler and KINDI with that he last saw
a year ago, he couldn't remember who it was. And
you've got children now five years after the fact of
when this guy had his main offenses, they wouldn't remember
a thing that happened to him. So the issue here
is that we've got one police force's coming out at

(11:26):
the front foot saying we need to adequately investigate this now.
But then we've got the Queensland police officers that have
investigated this with a cloud of secrecy where the full
extent of his crimes will never be truly found. I mean,
we're not even at the tip of the iceberg with
queens An. I don't think we're even at the breeze
over the top of the iceberg with a level offending.
So the biggest thing to come from this is that

(11:49):
it's disgusting what happened in the childcase centers, both in
Queensland and the allegations of Victoria. But the thing to
realize is that eighty percent of child abuse is incesture.
Ninety two percent is known. So the people that wanted
to pour their children out of childcare at this stage
don't realize that the most dangerous place for a child
to be is in the family home. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Well, I think that's an interesting point because the headlines
can distought the reality or the truth that childcare centers
a dangerous place, these things can happen, But you've highlighted
the fact that the majority of child sexual abuse occurs
in their own home, which is a significant point. Breaking

(12:33):
down that Queensland one because we can talk about that
in more detail because the matter has been before the court.
So it was actually Paul Griffith, he was recently sentenced
to life imprisonment after admitting to more than three hundred
defences against sixty nine girls at daycare facilities in Brisbane
and Italy. The magnitude of that beyond belief that he

(12:58):
could get away with something for so long, with so many,
so many victims, But it clearly shows there's a failing
in the way that we prevent these crimes and detect them.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Well, the thing with mister Griffiths with was that his
crimes were preventable and foreseeable. There was people dating back
nine years that actually first raised concerns about him. He
was spoken to by the police, but they didn't even
take steps to go through his devices, which they would
have found tens of thousands of images of child abuse,
and he would frequently change childcare centers. He would only

(13:33):
abuse children I think under four because he realized that
they were ones that would most likely not be able
to talk. But he was actually sending out letters to
parents of childcare centers where they're investigations of other staff members.
They're saying that children are meant to be safe and
they should be taken care of. In fact, at one stage,
he felt a sign of guilt and he deleted all

(13:54):
of his images that he collated over these years, only
to shortly thereafter download them again. So his was calculated,
and it was over a span of time, and the
parents that complained about him earlier on didn't see any recourse.
In fact, there was a whistleblower that was charged criminally
with computer hacking for simply raising the fact that their

(14:15):
earlier concerns were not investigated.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Can we talk about that. I had the discussion with
you before the podcast. Are you comfortable to talk about
that the details heard that? Because yeah, again we should
the leaning or the balance should always be in favor
of protecting the children, and this situation just seems to
be very off track on what the response should have

(14:39):
been when someone brings this to the attention of authorities.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
It went. So what happened was when the story first
broke after it was two years after they first identified
mister Griffin. They had identified him. I think it was
overseas where they found some blankets that were actually used
in some of the videos and they pinned pointed them
to blankets us in Queensland childcare facility. So that's how

(15:03):
they first got a hold of him. And so when
I went to the media, there was a whistleblower that
actually went to a current affair and said I notified
a center years ago this was happening, and they said, well,
how all right, Well, as any proper journalists would do,
they'd investigated. They said, can you send us an email
of where this first came from. So she pulled out
her work laptop and she sent the email to a

(15:25):
journalist saying here's proof that was sent. A few days later,
a task force rocked up at a doorstep and raided
her house and she got charged with computer hacking all
for simply saying, here is evidence of me providing the
childcare center proof that I had made a previous complaint
and so that matter went a trial. She went through

(15:47):
the ringers of a trial and her fight got made public.
Yet the offender, who sat in secrecy for many years,
was able to keep his anonymity for quite some time.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
It's easy to forget lessons learned without focusing on that
specific case. But you did bring up, and I want
to delve into this side of it. It gets brought
to the attention of police. I would suggest there's a
responsibility there to make sure it's responded too quickly, because

(16:20):
as long as someone's not no one's investigating an allegation,
there's potential for that offender to com meet further offenses.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
All complaints should be immediately investigated, and police have general
search warrants where if someone reports a crime, they can
go and access their devices. If a four year old
is going up to their parents and saying this person
touched me in appropriately and they go to the police,
there should be no rhyme or reason why police don't
immediately go and speak to that person, get their devices

(16:50):
and see that. If they did that, I believe it
was twenty eighteen, they would have found thousands of images
and videos and his reign of terror would have ended.
Then I just think it's a lot of these institutions
they don't want to deal with at front on because
they're worried about their bottom line and their exposure. But
if they come on the front foot saying we've put
this person on paid leave while we investigate this, you

(17:13):
know we're not saying he's done it. We just want
to make sure that we protect children. Our children are
our number one resource in this country who are going
to put in the great steps in the future. But
if they go down the tracks, so we need to
investigate all credible complaints and or even to go on
holiday for a week, let's just talk to the parents,
talk to the child, We'll get police to come out.

(17:35):
If there's an all clear after devices looked at, then
so be it. But when you've got multiple people from
multiple centers in Queensland that have raised concerns over years
and that I never investigated, it definitely raises concerns as
to the government or the institutions were negligent by not
actually following this through.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
It's concerning that they weren't all compiled to like one
allegation that someone doesn't carry the weight of If there's multiple,
independent of each other, allegations about the same person, it
tends to paint a picture. The number of victims and
how many offenses. Does that come as a surprise to you.
You've been focusing on this area, this horrible area, for

(18:18):
a long time. Does it come as a surprise to
you the amount of victims in these cases?

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Not at all. If you've got someone who's abusing children
at a school or a church, or a scout or
a sporting club, you're effectively having new children coming in
every year. I was shocked that he pled guilty to
as many counts as he did, because usually what happens
is they might charge someone with three or four thousand
counts and it gets downgraded into a few. But when

(18:47):
there's individuals like this that have footage of the offending
and they're actually using it as a kind of currency
to other individuals, it's in their vested interests to actually
continue to sell them. They're not getting caught with doing it,
and so they can to you. And it's like frauds
is for instance, like you see a lot of frauds
as they start sealing one hundred dollars here and there,
and then after a year they start going a thousand

(19:08):
and then go upwards. It's when there's a level of
a level of risk to it and they don't get caught,
it intensifies. And with mister Griffith, he deleted everything because
he felt bad about it, but then he continued to reoffend,
which didn't I think that was more of a thing
for sentencing submissions for him to try and downgrade his role.

(19:28):
But if you are persistently abusing children over a period
of years and you're saving images into hard drives, depicting
the titles of what you're actually doing and using it
for currency, you're not sorry you did it. You're sorry
you got caught. But the hardest thing with that is
that it could have been stopped so much earlier. And
we've seen how a lot of people have come forward

(19:49):
and blaming men for this, which is it's predominantly a
male crime, but saying banning all men from childcare centers
and baming all homosexual men from trying to child carease centers.
The hard thing is it's not a crime dominated by homosexuals.
It's predominantly straight males that engage in this offending. So

(20:11):
I think what you need to do with this sort
of offending is make sure that the institutions and the
childcare centers are liable for their own acts. So don't
handball off to the offender. Say to these childcase centers,
you are liable for any abuse that happens under your watch.
And you watch how quickly these centers will set up
on their insurers, will set up cameras and set up

(20:31):
offsite cctv A professionals to review everything. If you watch
childcase centers start actually adequately monitoring what they're doing, you'll
see how quickly they act when it comes to an
allegation of a child. If a child comes forward within
a few months and says this happened to me, they
be able to go back to all the footage involving
that child and see where the offender was, and if

(20:55):
an offender's in close proximity or if they're taking children
to dark spots in childcare centers, people should entertainously raise
concerns about what's happening, because in my experience, when a
child comes and says that someone touched me in this area,
it's a credible threat because children don't know, especially younger

(21:17):
children don't know what's happened to him was wrong. Most
of most children learn what happened to them was wrong
when they start learning things about sexual ed But education
is important for children, especially for parents, saying these are
your private parts. You always let us know you won't
be in trouble. If anyone touches you there, you come
to us right away. So it's an education thing for
the parents, but it's also a risk limiting thing for

(21:38):
the individuals involved.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Well, just focusing on the point that you made. They're
making the organization or institutional institution liable for what occurs,
because I think we saw that in the history of times,
where an institution it's just a rogue rogue priest or
a rogue scout leader, something along those lines. But what
you're saying is making the child care senda's liable for

(22:01):
anything that the curves on there. And then then the
highly motivates people then to make sure this type of
thing doesn't occur because they count wipe their hands of it.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, it takes seconds to abuse a child if you're
in centers like this, But when someone's able to procure
hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of images of
abuse material, it's something that other staff members could have seen,
something they could know. If there's a staff member taken
a child to a dark zone, to the place, or
leading them to the very back corner, questions should be

(22:34):
asked immediately where this is a training thing. People are
entrusting these organizations with their children. They're making a lot
of money. I think I'm spending three or one hundred
dollars a week on my childcare center for my child,
and you want to make sure if you're dropping your
children off, you should be safe. They have insurance in place.
Obviously they want to limit their exposure. So it should

(22:54):
be up for these centers to make sure that they
are not only there's staff trained, but also there's cameras
everywhere prevent this from occurring. Because there's been some people
in South Australia the past week. They've lost their jobs
because they've used child care property to send photos of
nappy rashes to parents and say, hey, there's a very
bad nappy rash now. That wouldn't have happened six months ago,

(23:15):
that would have happened a year ago. The only silver
lining from what's happened in Queensland and the allegations in
Victoria that child care centers are finally taking a stand.
This is the third worst one we've had in the
past four or five years, and it should have been
the first time that we heard that all these changes happen,
but they're now going This is a live issue and

(23:36):
this topic that I've been pushing for years. It's such
an uncomfortable thing. Often blame my wife for being the
reason why it's wrong, and that's not saying aside my wife.
It's that whenever there's anything on the news about child
abuse having young children, my wife so I don't want
to watch, and I'm like, no, you're a parent, you
need to watch this. It's not a thing that happens
to very rare people. It's prevalent in the community, and

(24:00):
it's something that parents need to be aware of, be
vigilant of, and actually get on the front foot with it.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Well, Andrew, I think you've identified a major problem about
the nature of this crime. It's such an uncomfortable topic
that people don't want to talk about it. But that's
the very thing that the people will commit these offenses
pray on the fact that it's confronting them. People don't
want to talk about it. I want to break down
how we can strengthen and make it harder for an
offender to come into a childcare situation if we focus

(24:27):
on that. Invariably, when offenses like this occur, when it
does blow up, when it explodes, people start to say, yeah,
I thought that person was a bit strange, or yeah,
there was something that made me feel uncomfortable. They see
it and hear it time and time again, this type
type of narrative. People have got to come forward, and
I think there is some merit to the police stepping in. Now.

(24:48):
The police don't have to come in heavy handed, but
if you're committing these type of offenses and someone's reported
or brought it to the attention of police, and police
come in and speak to the person, just maybe that
might be a the part of a deterrent that might
stop it. If they get away of it, they might
go straight back to it. But I think it's a
step in the right direction to at peace put them

(25:08):
on notice. And you would like to think that these allegations.
If if someone's worked multiple childcare centers and there's been allegations,
maybe unsubstantiate allegations at more than one of those places,
you'd really want to have a look at that person,
wouldn't you.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, And especially they're talking about work with Child certificate.
If there's allegations that weren't investigated by police officers, it
would never pop up in a work with children investigation.
There's some industries that have databases of individuals that go
between different different centers or different employers where they've actually
got comments of past performance or history where people can

(25:46):
actually say, all right, well this person had allegations here,
but there's no rhyme or reason why. If there's an allegation,
it wouldn't take much police resources to have an officer
go speak to the person, take a hard drive, say
we're just going to download all the content as you
phone your laptop at home, just to make sure that
there's no credible issues here. Because these individuals, they work

(26:06):
with a large network of offenders where they actually use
these images as currency to trade, and some of the
dark web groups actually enabled for someone to be let in,
they need to first upload some new child abuse material
which they've never seen before. So if you get someone
that's had their hard drive search by police, they might

(26:29):
go on these groups say hey, I'm out like this
happened to me. I don't want to bar of this.
I don't want I don't want this because it's the
child abuse images. They don't normally involve a period of grooming.
They're normally sporadic. We know how quickly it takes to
take a photo of someone, especially if you're a childcare worker.
When you're taking the photo of changing and appy, you

(26:50):
can pull your phone out, take a photo and put
it back in within seconds. But the physical app against
a child takes a significant period of grooming to get
their trust and get close to them. So quite simply
just getting a quick check of a phone.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
It makes a lot of sense there. I for the
I'm thinking that if an allegation has been made, police
are called out, they might be able to stantiate. Even
if they do what you've said, they do, seize the phone,
do all that, it might be unsubstantiated. But when I
was in the police, we had intel on people. So

(27:25):
there could be a person that look like they're about
to commit an armed robbery, but they were stopped beforehand,
but that intel would be on their record. That it's
not proof of committing a criminal offense, but it makes
you wary of the fact that that person was caught
outside a bank with a balaclavorn for one of an example.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Well, look at the anti association laws, like if you've
got two perhaps biking members in the same location together,
it's not asked questions later, it's go in. You're both
here in the place you're underrest, out to go where
there's nothing stopping hundreds of child offenders from meeting a
playground or go into a Wiggles concert like it's the
resources are there and the scared tacle it can be

(28:05):
there if they're actually properly used.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Okay, let's look at taking away those specific cases, taking
away the cases that we've talked about, but looking at
how could we prevent this crime across the board And
you mentioned and well I didn't have it on the list,
but I hadn't thought about phones. Is it over stretching
to say that no one can have their mobile phone,

(28:30):
Like even employees there that they've got to sign it
into the office and mobile phone when they come in,
so they don't have access to the mobile phone or
any device that can take photos.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
In South Australia, there's a big submarine corporation down in
near Port Adelaide, where because it's effectively a defense initial security. Yeah,
people are forced to sign their phones in before their start. Like,
I think one of the big thing is Apple watches
as well, people can I don't know if Apple watches
take photos, but even having a on it's successful to

(29:01):
your phone. One of the main things should be that,
especially when you're around children, when one of the most
dominant things about children are potentially child exploitation images being taken,
have them set aside. There's no reason why employees can
take five minutes and go check their phone if they're
going to sick child, or give an emergency number or
even a number to call the childcare center if they

(29:22):
need to be spoken to right away. But the reason
why these individuals have been caught recently is because the
images that have had on their phone is basically paint
the target on their back. So that's one way to start.
I think the biggest thing to start up front is
to actually have people talking about this.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
What you mentioned there, Like, I'm thinking, Ah, it might
be too much of an imposse to take people's phones,
but you can only use your phone in the office era.
The phone's got to remain in the office era, and Also,
if you're caught with any device, because now you've got
glasses that can take for those, you've got all sorts
of things, any device that can have taken image, it's
a sackable offense. You've breached the the code of conduct

(30:01):
for working in that place. So they say that they
seem over the top and stringent, but when we're talking
about these crimes, the priority has to be protecting protecting
the children.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
And what we've seen in schools in South Australia, they're
actually banning mobile phone use for students between the classes.
So what they're doing is they're putting their phones in
a lock bag during the day they're still on campus.
They still can use them if there's an emergency, but
it's to stop them from being distracted in class. And
when we're seeing government's banning phones from children because they're

(30:36):
seeing text messages, it's like, wow, the children aren't producing
a level of exploitation material is other people. So it's
not a hard task about that. They wouldn't require any
change in legislation. It would just be a center policy
do not have your phones during the day. That's nothing
that would cause any debate, and I don't think the

(30:58):
governments will will blank an eye in discrimination wise, if
a childcare center says, look, well, you've been fired because
we gave a direct a direction not to use your
phone during time. Someone's walking around a change table pulling
their phone out messaging, it's a sack of all events.
It's a breach of contract.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
It makes sense to me. What about CCTV footage cameras
installed in places like this and to make sure that
all the areas are captured, all the air appropriate areas
are captured, so people can't offend around the quiet corner.
What's your thoughts on that type of setup.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
If laws are introduced to basically hold childcare centers liable
for any crime spin as a child, it would be
the number one way to protect themselves and to deterror offending.
If institutions started having CCTV cameras. And this isn't like
a zoom ring sorry, not a zoom a ring doorbell cam.
This is getting specialized security experts to into the building

(32:01):
and make sure that there's no dead spot. But the
only issue with that is that, well, who's going to
have access to the CCTV footage to them unless there's
Unless there's a specialized off not offshore but off site
entergy that has these or even storage, so they don't
have anyone that can actually adequately monitor these things twenty

(32:22):
four to seven. I mean, look a look at this
level of storage you can get now people can back
up years worth of footage and technology. Now. I remember
when when USB sticks first came out, there were sixty
seventy dollars where you can get a terrabyte which I
think it's a thousand gig of memory for you know,

(32:43):
not even one hundred bucks from jbhi Fi. So there
are storage means available. There's there's way for the cloud,
but that way, if there's any investigating done with with offenders,
it can be done. Look at there was a swimming
center in I think the Eastern States where they use
AI to actually monitor a swimming lapse. The a I

(33:05):
actually identified a swimmer that had a health issue in
the middle of a swim and started sinking and alarm
bells went off and staff actually went there to it.
So one of the big concerns to me for CCTV
footage is if anyone accessed it. If there's a camera
above a change table, that would be prime positioning for
an offender to use. But if there's say if a

(33:25):
child came home with UTIs for instance, and it was
only utiy's when there was a certain worker working, well,
and that's the case right, Well, you know there's always
spreadsheets of when a child's nappy was changed, so you
can try and pinpoint when the nappy was changed to
see if anything happened to that child.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Well, it does come with it's inherent risks. I suppose
who's going to access it? But I know the type
of CCTV cameras security that they have set up in
prisons where it doesn't have to be monitored live. But
if they find out the bed than the fence of
the curve the week before, they can go back and
access at particular time and access that camera. So again

(34:02):
it's something that if these people and they manipulate, they
manipulate the type of people that abuse children. They're picking
on the children because they don't report the crimes. They're
putting themselves in an industry where they potentially can have
access to children. But to put that risk, that threat
that okay, well we're capturing everything that goes on here,

(34:23):
so you yeah, you better behave yourself. It feels to
me like it would be a deterrent.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
It would be, But I think the one thing that
parents need to look at now is to have these
uncomfortable discussions with their children and with other family members
and say, look, you know, this is what we need
to do. We need to tell our child about this.
If anyone touches you in a bad way, this is
something you need to tell us. And it's there's never
an easy way to say this. But the only silver

(34:51):
lining about what's happened here is bringing child abuse to
the forefront. We've seen influencers talk about it, We've seen
athletes talk about that. You no one ever talks about
this thing because it's so taboo. But when this is
in the forefront of every news story, this is time
to pull the trigger and say, right, you know, this
is the thing. Look. Look, last year they had all

(35:11):
these protests about domestic violence. Domestic violence impacts one in
six women, so females are twice as likely to be
sexually abused rather than have a domestic violent crime against them.
But there was all these protests, there was people shutting
down streets, so they should protesting this, But people don't
want to have these uncomfortable conversations about this and it's

(35:32):
something that parents need to come to the table. Parents
need to stand up. Like every week, I do videos
every Friday on my Instagram page where I detail the
percentage of people charted the District Court of South Australia
per week with a sexual offend against a child. Guess
how many percent today in South Australia of all the
district court lists, how many people are charged with child abuse?

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Afraid do I ask? How many?

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Thirty five point four percent today alone on the list?
On the list. And so the reason why these matters
aren't reported is because eighty percent is ancestral and ninety
two percent is known to the VICNAM survivor. So if
you can identify the offender or the child, you can't
identify the offender. And the reason why it's ever reported

(36:19):
on because the meta outlets don't want to breach the
Evidence Act in South Australia or the equivalent of other states.
Because this is a real pressing issue that although it
can't be discussed about those instances, when something like this happens,
it's a time for parents to talk about. Look at
nine to eleven for instance, nine to eleven was the
safest time for air travel because as soon as that happened,

(36:40):
it was terrible what the attacks were. But after that
security systems were set up. There was weapon detectors. You know,
if someone has a nail clippers in their carry on bag, no,
that's a dangerous weapon. So when something like this happens,
it's terrific. But you then see the pendulum swing in
favor of the victor survivor of hey, how can we
stop this happening again? And until people speak about this,

(37:03):
and I mean I think people speaking about it is
more important right now than having laws implemented, because the
more people discuss it, the more prevalent people will see
how it is. And having these chats with their children
will make sure that they can understand body autonomy, understand
what good and bad touching is, and at least go
to your parents and say, hey, you know, uncle Bob

(37:23):
squeezed me here the other day and I didn't like it.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, it's pretty when I say it's simple, it's fairly
obvious that the type of things that should be done.
And you know, part of in our discussions before we
got you on here, I wanted to talk about this
because it was prevalent, and really get it out there
so people talk about it. Because these crimes have flourished
because people don't talk about it. And yeah, way back

(37:48):
when we're doing the Preparatory podcast, that's the thing that
we're talking about very much, that it's such a horrific
crime and it's some uncomfortable thing to talk about. People
don't want to talk about it. What about reporting notifications?
Your thoughts on that can we improve reporting incidents notifications

(38:11):
like compulsory reporting, statutory reporting if you become aware of
offenses like this and then the offense if you don't report.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yeah, and that's what part of the Royal Commission actually
touched on. There was Everson's The Royal Commission came out
and said people need to be charged they if they
withhold information. There's not been one conviction since twenty fifteen
about people withholding knowledge. We've seen George Pell before he
passed away, there was a countless people that came forward
saying that he knew about things. The reporting is it

(38:42):
should be, it's mandatory. I think mandatory reporting in South
Australia came in nineteen seventy five and then in nineteen
eighty one. It was actually extended to teachers. I don't
think it fell into childcare workers back then, but mantar
reporting but actually to a specialized database. But the number
one thing that I think is most important when it

(39:02):
comes to reporting is that when say, a child's abuse
by a big scary man, having a big scary police
officer in a room that's just got four walls and
a door in it is not the thing. I think
One of the main things that need to be done
is a social worker or a child psychologist actually conducts
some of these first interviews with children because it's a

(39:27):
lot of children do not want to recount this, but
after there's some rapport that's granted, they will actually want
to discuss it. And we even see in say in
courts in around around Australia, fighters agains child who abuse Australia.
They implemented things where they wanted to have support dogs
and even something as simple as a judge d robing

(39:49):
I've simply taken off their wig and gown and sitting
next to the child at the table and saying Hi,
my name's my name is Bob. I'm working here Astralia.
I just want to hear because it's a very, very
weird thinking. One big example that I've always just spoken
about is that people still picture themselves as that young
child when they report so later on. And I think

(40:11):
the average timeframe is twenty nine point four years for
someone to report child sexual abuse, and ordinarily the reports
are done contemporaneously are the ones that ordinarily have the
strongest conviction, because if someone reports being sexually abused that day,
they can go to a hospital, they can have a
rape fit done, they can have DNA done. But it's
the hard thing is it's a lot of works, especially

(40:34):
if they're starting a new center of the here on
a certain visa. They don't want to speak out about
someone who's in a position to power over them. If
they see something inappropriate, they're worried about it, but there's
laws against that under children protection that you can't actually
be victimized for a legitimate complaint, and it's not about
going to the head of your work. There are hotlines

(40:56):
set up where people can call and make anonymous tips
and say I'm concerned, I saw this, what do I do?
And they will then deem it as a credible But
like you touched on before, just having investigators rock up
and take someone's phone. That in itself, if you're a
thinking of offending you see that's happened to someone else,
that act alone will scare the life out of you
and make sure that you don't want to offend.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
A deterrent Because I understand how hard it is to
prove some of these offenses and get the conviction, But
if there's a frequency or a person who's been rapported
or allegations have been made against them by independent parties
time and time again, surely that has to mark them
that there's a red flag there that they shouldn't have access.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
With Ashley Griffith, he had allegations of numerous childcare centers
in the past before he finally got got done. And
you think there's an old saying, it's once there's a chance,
twice as a coincident, third times a pattern where someone
has gone to different centers and there's been concerns raised
by not only workers but parents and individuals still to

(42:01):
continue with work. That to me is warning signs and
that in itself is the childcare center's complicity in the event.
And the thing with these offenders is they're actually using
the images as currency. And you think we discussed it
on the last time on your show that a bike
is arrested the first thing that happened. There's a news
crew there where they're uploading their g wagons onto a

(42:21):
pickup truck. But if you've got a person that works
casually in a childcare center, that drives a BMW that
affords six overseas trips a year, questions should be raised
right away. Where is this money coming.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
To proceeds from crime? The crime being the abuse of children?
And yeah, Andrew, the impact that has on the family
of kids like this in the nature of the work
that you do that it's a very dark area, like
supporting these people, what sort of impact does it have
on the not just a victim, but the family.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
It's the parents usually riddle by guilt. They're saying, you know, well,
you know I had to go back to work, like
I couldn't do this. But it's it's I've seen it
teir marriages apart. I see people don't want other children
because of it. They I've seen people that they The
main thing I've seen is that people will quit their jobs,
live in poverty to make sure they homeschool their children

(43:14):
because they're so terrified of it happening again. And the
hard thing is it's like any any place every say
please you hear you know one police officer every other
month that's been arrested doing something, but one dodgy police
officer makes entire look bad. And these are very, very
very rare in childcase centers because child care centers have

(43:35):
a lot of people around and it's too risky for
offenders to act here. So it's it's risky for that,
but the parents will still think what if My biggest
concern is for all the people that are in Queensland
or the allegations in Victoria, that the dread of not
even waiting for any STI checks to the parents is
just thinking, hey, on our six month old was a

(43:57):
childcare center with mister Griffin or with the individuals charged
or allegations within Victoria, and just their mind raising, was
our child a victims survived, this happened to them and
just the paranoia around that. It's the guilt that parents
feel because they feel responsible for leaving their child at
a center with a person that they should be entrusted with.

(44:18):
The parents guilt is it just tears them apart. But
it's not the parents fault. I mean it's in this
day and age, it's not a matter where people can
live with you know, one parent working. Most people need
to live to be how to put food on the table,
need to work to put food on the table. So
the guilt is there, but it's it's a guilt that
although they feel it, it's not their fault what happened

(44:39):
to them. And that's exactly like all victims survivors. It's
never a victim survivor's fault something happened to them. There's
only one person that has a choice where anyone's engaged
in underage child abuse, and it's it's the choice of
the adult.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Do you do you think the courts starting to come
to terms with the magnitude of the crime and impacted
the crime.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
I don't think it's the courts. I think it's the
government that's The government's not implementing strict descendancing. I mean
you've got look at for instance, you never see someone
arrested with one image. It's always hundreds of images or thousands,
and there should at least be a staggered tier to that.
But the I don't think the laws caught up with
technology yet and trying to see how many images people

(45:24):
have or how quickly this thing to be disseminated. I
think the issue here is that there should be one
most important thing. There should be strict penalties on grooming,
for instance, if you that's really cutting off the head
of the state. But until you start seeing people get
adequate sentences. I sat in court last week two clients
of mine. They are a male and female. They'll persistently

(45:48):
sexually abused the worst time of their father. And I
always fell off my chair when you only got nine
years for over a decade of abuse. He got nine years.
I had one girl that she was abused from two
and a half sixteen, almost a daily basis. You've got
eight years in prison. And this is the governments aren't
putting all their effort into this, dissuading it, and they

(46:09):
know these numbers. It's no longer a knowledge problem, it's
an accountability problem. The fact that politicians aren't jumping up
and down like look at. There was a High Court
case last year called Burden DP which the High Court
basically said that institutions are no longer responsible for the
acts of volunteers and so they can't be sued. But
the High Court actually said in that case, but if
the States legislator around this, they can. Now that was

(46:32):
December twenty twenty three, that case came out, and now
in July twenty twenty five, there's not been one. So
that was twenty four came and there's not been one
government that's actually said we're going to change that right away.
In fact, what has happening around the Eastern States is
that anyone that's bought an action against an institution, they're

(46:52):
now saying not offering your recent high courts against you.
And if the highest court in the country is saying
you don't have a case and the government is not
legis around that, that is a slap in the face
of it survivors.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Yeah, and the high courts identifying where the problem was,
this is there to be fed.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Yeah, we're leaving this open for the governments. Hint, hint,
close it now so this never happens again. Nothing' When
that first came down, Madeline West came to Adelaide. We
had a meeting with the state State Liberal government and
they told it to the state labor government right away.
And it's been seven months now. Nothing not even a WinCE.
And there was even in Victoria about a month ago

(47:32):
there was all these plaintiff law firms that took out
a two page ad in the Herald Son and said
this is the damage this case is doing. And still nothing,
and that's people don't want to talk about it. And
it's not a vote getter for politicians because they know
everyone hates child offenders and it's not going to change
anyone's perception of them saying they're going to fight against

(47:55):
these creatures. But when there's a loophole like the superannuation
that's been open for that long that people are exploiting,
why wouldn't you If a person is a priest and
they sexy abuse a child over a period of time
and their sued, then the church goes sorry, priest was
not employee, We're not liable.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
It's a loophole that doesn't encourage people to prevent it. Look,
since I've been out of the cops and the work
that I do and the people I speak to, I've
saw the vapor in my eyes to a few things
on crime and punishment and that type of thing, and
probably a little bit more lenient than what I was
when I was in the police in terms of custodial
sentences and how people should be treated. But what I

(48:36):
see with people that abuse children, sexually abused children is
that it's not one offense, it's numerous offenses and the
impact it has on people's lives. I'm sort of swinging
the pendulum a little bit where I say, Okay, well,
maybe jailing is not the right answer, but if people
want to reduce crime, and this is my experience when

(48:58):
I did that podcast series in prison, I was shocked
by how many people in prison were victims of child
sexual abuse. And so when we talk about reducing crime,
and you know, you'll have a state election and people
will bang their chest and go, we going to fight,
get tough on crime, hit the offense that probably generates
more crime than any other, and that's the abuse of children.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
So yeah, and that's why offenders usually plays protective customers,
because most people in prison are abused. And what I
see a lot is when a child starts acting differently.
I've got one one very brave young woman that she
came forward. She heard a song on the radio about
twenty years after it happened and disclosed to her parents
and when she disclosed to her parents right away. They've gone.

(49:40):
When you were that age, you just changed over a week,
and we had no idea. We always suspected something happened
and it changed. Or when you've got people that you
know their love going to their uncle's house and it's
a favorite person in the world and then all of
a sudden, overnight, I'd never want to go back there again.
Or look at Larry Nasara in America, the Olympics gymnastic coach.

(50:00):
How many elite female athletes overnight just said no, I
give up the sport because this has happened. And one
thing that I've always found weird is just the prevalence
of the understanding of it you look at. I remember
watching the two thousand and one MTV Movie Awards, and
I remember because Chris Rock was one of my he's
one of my favorite comedians. He was what he was

(50:21):
hosting it, and he made a joke in two thousand
and one and he said, r Kelly's here tonight, which
means you have to send the Olsome twins to the
back of the room. They were making jokes of that.
Twenty four years ago. I think R Kelly was sentenced
maybe three or four years ago. But again this was
Hollywood saying, hey, yeah, this is funny. We know this
guy's are creep, but nothing came out of it. Michael Jackson,

(50:42):
for and look at even Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley met
his wife when he was in his twenties and she
was fourteen. Yeah, it doesn't like it's and people they
seem to go, you know this guy's yeah, is a
great guy, he's done this, but people tend to look
away from that. And it's it's something where in this
day and age, people are starting to look back and think, well,

(51:02):
hang on, that's not right. But you know what about
what happened to these children when these offenders were still
at large. There's nothing that's happening to them. And until
that the government stamps down and says, look, you know,
we want to make sure that this change. I imagine
if one in three women was and one in five
boys were, say, dealing meth or engaging in road rage

(51:25):
things like that, how quickly would it change. But the
fact that we're not doing anything to eliminate these risks.
Even if we got it to one in four girls,
that's still millions. And I think we Australia's twenty five
million people, so split it in half, which is about
twelve and a half one in three girls out of
that twelve and a half million, so fifty four million

(51:45):
Australians have been sexuy abused at a female and then
with the boys that'd be about two and a half million.
That's a shocking stat that and then out of that
the conviction rate is point zero three percent. If you
I spoke last election, I spoke with Grace Tame at
an event in Melbourne and people weren't getting the stats

(52:06):
of it. And I've always said the most trusted news
source for me in Australia is sports Bet. They hit
them out ahead of.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Everything, break break that dam as in the stats with sports.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Big yeah yeah, and so with like sports Bet pick
every election. And I said, right, well, I think it
was a Melbourne playing North Melbourne or an AFL game.
And I said North Melbourne are paying like ten to
one odds who have put their money on them, and
everyone's like they're gonna lose, is it right? The closest
stat to ninety nine point nine nine seven percent last

(52:38):
year was Pauline Hanson and Bob Catter becoming the next
Prime Minister of Australia. Now, if you think how remote
that was from happening. And people said, that's ridiculous, that
will never happen, And I said, that's the percentages. Oh,
that's the likelihood of someone getting away with child sexual abuse.
And people went, oh, I think Kanye West was paying

(52:58):
two hundred and one dollars to one of becoming American
president one stage, And people think, oh, yeah, this is
a laugh. But it's like, this is how remote these
starts are. Like if you're a if you're a gambling man,
if you're going to commit a crime, that you've got
a ninety nine point nine nine seven percent chance of
getting off roll the dice. Yeah, it's it's insane. And

(53:19):
when people start hearing numbers, they don't believe it. When
you start giving real life examples, that's when people go, oh, yeah, yeah,
that's bad.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Well we said that when we first started talking about
this issue, not just on this podcast, but over the years.
Really you've got to bash people over the head with
the statistics and the nature of the crime to bring
people out. So look, you've given us, again, very informed
insight into what gets reported in the media and breaking

(53:50):
it down. I just want to say to you, Andrew,
stay angry, keep up the good work. And I know, yeah,
when there is a there is a lighter side to you.
I know when people have seen you on the podcast
Jesus that blokes wound up. But it's a very important
thing that you're wound wound up on and the work

(54:10):
that you do I think is very very important. And
keep keep fighting.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Thank you. Can you tell my wife that I make
a lot of sense more often because you say that
more than she does.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
I don't know if we can step that far, and
I can only sympathize with her, yes, But I know
you're enjoying yourself with your family at the moment, and yeah,
get that balance because you're in the dark world the
area that you're fighting, So get some balance on the
on the other side.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
So and thank you for you and the team for
always wanting to highlight these issues. I mean, you're you're
using your your platform to always highlight victims' rights, and
I mean, I'm quite passionate about it, even though it's
ever happened to me. I just see how bad it is.
But always having you your support of always wanting to
fight fight the good fight and actually highlight how often

(55:00):
these things happen and trying to get on the front
foot and using your platform for that is amazing. So
thank you for all the work you do and and
for always having having a message back and forward and
and you know, fighting the good fight. Cheers. Thank you, Gary,