While it’s laudable that the ABC is devoting considerable effort to exposing the horrifying incursion of paedophiles into the childcare industry, their determination to exploit horror to push an ideological bandwagon is as odious as it is obvious.
Consider, for instance, the first of their ‘safety check’ questions for parents palming their kids off to strangers:
Who owns the childcare centre?
Specifically, is the childcare provider for-profit or non-profit? It is an important distinction, because our investigation found that for-profit centres were over-represented in cases where child sexual abuse offences took place.
Without seeing their actual data, the first response is that, given that for-profit centres are vastly over-represented in the childcare sector, it shouldn’t be surprising if there are more cases involving the private sector.
But, for months, the ABC has been running a determined agenda against the private childcare sector. Their ideological claim is clear: childcare should be universal, as espoused by PM Anthony Albanese, and run entirely by the government. The ABC also regularly attacks private schooling. If they had their way, then, parents should hand their babies to the state from just after birth until they graduate from high school.
How badly misplaced, though, is the ABC’s faith in government-run enterprises? When your entire career is funded by the taxpayer, you might have blind faith in government, but anyone who’s paid the least attention to the ongoing litany of child-abuse crimes and coverups in government schools might not be so sanguine.
While [Peter Farmer] serves his sentence in prison, six of his victims are suing the Victorian Education Department for failing to protect them and for what they allege was its inaction, which led to him teaching and offending further in the Northern Territory.
Lola* was sexually abused every day at school for two years [...]
Jo* vividly remembers Farmer rearranging classroom furniture to create spaces to carry out his abuse.
Yet, adult witnesses had been reporting his abuse for years. Dianne Smith, who worked at a milk bar (dairy, for Kiwis) across the road from the school, reported to the principal that she had witnessed Farmer molesting a student. The next day, Farmer moved on from the school. Smith was not interviewed by police until 30 years later.
When the ABC tracked down [principal] Brian Rodgers, who retired in 1993, he conceded the Education Department took “the easy way out”.
He does not remember any talk of Farmer’s abuse prior to Ms Smith.
He immediately asked Ms Smith to make a written statement, called Farmer and told him he was not to return to the school, and informed the department.
And, just as happened in the churches, the problem was kicked down the road.
The ABC understands that Education Department records show the department and Victoria Police had communicated in relation to Farmer on at least one occasion, but it is not clear when that communication occurred or what it was about.
When asked by the ABC why Farmer was allowed to resign, rather than be fired, Mr Rodgers said it was handled by the department.
Not everyone is, surprisingly, satisfied with that explanation.
Grace Wilson, a lawyer with Rightside Legal, is representing six survivors in their individual claims in the Victorian Supreme Court.
In response to her clients’ statements of claim, the Victorian Education Department has so far denied responsibility.
“We’re saying he could and should have been stopped earlier. They’re saying ‘prove it’,” Ms Wilson said.
“This didn’t happen in some prehistoric time where no one was aware of the risk of child abuse or where it was excusable [for the education department] not to have policies and procedures in place to protect children from that risk.”
Ms Wilson said it did not look like anything had been done at the time to stop Farmer from continuing his abuse after he left the school.
While records show that Farmer was barred from working with children in Victorian schools, he simply moved interstate and carried on.
“It doesn’t appear that anything that happened in Gippsland prevented him from having access to children in future,” Ms Wilson said.
“We know that he went on to live in both Queensland and the Northern Territory.”
In sentencing Farmer, the Victorian court noted he had faced allegations of sexual abuse in the Northern Territory.
If there’s one thing we know about paedophiles, it’s that they’re devious and organised. There are countless other cases, such as David MacGregor, who kept working as a teacher in Victoria for seven years after being convicted as a child molester.
So, tell us again how children would be any safer in government-run childcare.
