Australia’s abuse-plagued childcare industry has been exploited by thousands of paedophiles, a bombshell investigation into the lucrative private operator-dominated sector has found.
ABC’s Four Corners identified almost 150 childcare workers who have been convicted, charged, or accused of sexually abusing children, most in the last decade, but found that the true number of paedophiles who have preyed on kids while working in the system is likely to be in the thousands.
The major investigation also found that offending was increasing and hundreds of centres were breaching child safety laws, while experts said operators in the $22 billion industry were failing to detect and stop child sex predators.
University of New South Wales Professor of criminology Michael Salter said the public was unaware of how bad the situation was due to information being “quarantined”, and warned that “we need to wake up”.
“My real sense of alarm is that often we are only detecting those men through the online investigations into their images and videos. We are not detecting them on the ground in childcare centres through proactive safeguarding measures,” he said.
Drew Viney, the former head of the Australian Federal Police’s National Victim Identification Unit, also warned about a lack of safeguards in the system, and said he’d witnessed “failures at multiple levels” firsthand while investigating Australia’s worst ever paedophile, Ashley Paul Griffith.
“The childcare centres would swear black and blue that they would never have the opportunity to do things like that,” he said.
“But the videos later showed that [Griffith] acted with complete impunity.
“He would set up a tripod and would record his ongoing abuse on multiple occasions. … He had no concern that someone would come in and identify what he was doing.”
The mother of one of Griffith’s victims said: “These monsters are thriving in these spaces because it’s so easy for them.”
The investigation also found that 77% of centres suffered from staff shortages at least weekly, and industry insider Katrina Broadbent said the for-profit nature of the sector, which is 70% private, was to blame for declining standards and child protection failures.
“When you put that financial dollar sign on the care of that child, that’s when you’re going to start having problems. And I think that’s where the for-profit providers are adding to this,” she said.
“The bigger providers in particular are operating on very tight budgets and staffing is one way that they can cut costs while still adhering to the basics of regulations.”
The revelations come after it was revealed that international students with no interest in education are using fast-tracked childcare courses as a pathway to permanent residency in Australia and posing a risk to child safety.
Childcare centres around Australia have reported serious issues with such graduates, including inappropriate physical contact with children, disregard for safety rules and practices, ignoring children in distress, and falling asleep while supervising.
But despite the problems plaguing the industry, the federal and state governments are trying to grow the sector and push more children into childcare centres.
Prior to the federal election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese offered three days a week of subsidised childcare for most young families as well as promising $1 billion in funding to build or expand a range of early education centres.
In Victoria, the Jacinta Allan-led Labor government is building 50 state-owned and operated childcare centres, and it has already introduced “universal three-year-old kinder [and] made both three- and four-year old kinder totally free for every Victorian child”.
Header image: Notorious paedophile Ashley Paul Griffith.
