Here we go again:
A childcare worker with Affinity Education charged with nine counts of sexual abuse against a child has pleaded not guilty and will face a hearing in a regional NSW court.
The man is charged with nine counts of intentionally sexually touching a child under 10 years of age, and one count of rape. It is not known if the child abuse offences relate to the same victim.
The man has been granted bail, with a hearing date to be set on July 23. Further details cannot be published for legal reasons.
This is the third high-profile case of a childcare worker charged with child molestation in the past year. There have been at least two or three other, less well-reported cases, in the same period. There are also hundreds of cases of other physical abuse and criminal neglect of children in childcare in the past couple of years, involving both male and female offenders.
New data has revealed more than 170 NSW children aged five or under are alleged to have been victims of sexual assault or touching in their pre-school education centres over the past five years, amid rising concern about the safety of young children in care.
There were 18 adults charged with committing sexual offences in early education settings over the same period, including 17 men and one woman, the figures from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) found.
The BOCSAR data said there were 54 alleged victims in the 12 months to March 2025, the highest in that five-year period, and 37 in the previous 12 months, the second-highest rate. The figures are based on direct reports to police and those passed on from child protection.
In 2024 alone, there were more than 26,000 cases of sexual and physical abuse of children in daycare, perpetrated by male and female workers.
The Parenthood campaign director Maddie Butler said parents and carers across the country were feeling “concerned and distressed” about the statistics coming out of NSW, as well as what occurred in Victoria.
“You want to know that when you leave your child in an early learning setting, that they are in an environment that’s high quality, and your child will be nurtured and protected,” she said.
The organisation is calling for the “urgent” establishment of a national independent early childhood education commission for national oversight, consistent quality and accountability.
Or – hear me out – “Australia’s leading parent advocacy organisation” could try campaigning for parents to be parents, rather than outsourcing their responsibilities to what amounts to hired help. Instead, the organisation’s website gives every appearance of being little more than a lobby group for the childcare industry.
And you just know this is going to turn into another misandrist, man-hating, campaign.
As horrified parents grapple with the latest sexual abuse scandal at a childcare centre, which has forced 1200 preschoolers to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, an abuse survivors’ collective has called for a ban on male workers.
Louise Edmonds, a founding member of the Independent Collective of Survivors, says the safety of children must be prioritised over all else.
Well, OK, given the documented spiralling epidemic of sexual abuse of children in schools, with more and more abusers emerging as women, let’s see a ban on female teachers.
Or perhaps we should just abandon the entire grotesque social experiment of ‘childcare’?
Or is it that we don’t really care about our children that much, if parents being productive economic units is so much more important?
