00:00 It's a common mistake to think that a working with children check is a certificate to mean
00:06 you're safe to work with children. They're not. A working with children check is a safety
00:12 net to stop people who we already know that there are problems with from working with
00:17 children. It's not a prevention mechanism. It doesn't capture people who haven't yet
00:22 been caught.
00:24 Many parents will be surprised and extremely worried to hear that.
00:29 I think it's a hard day as a parent, and I'm a parent myself, to send your children off
00:34 to institutions, schools, childcare centres. I'd reassure parents that most people working
00:41 with kids are there for the right reasons. Most of our institutions are incredibly safe
00:46 and they've gotten safer since the Royal Commission, but it doesn't stop predatory perpetrators
00:51 from slipping through the cracks.
00:53 So how could this man have been picked up?
00:58 When we talk about what were the red flags, red flags make it seem like it's so obvious,
01:03 but child sexual abuse doesn't happen in the spotlight. It thrives in the shadows. What
01:09 we do tend to see, though, is what I think of as orange flags. When we look in hindsight
01:14 at these types of cases, we often see lots of smaller warning signs, professional boundary
01:21 breaches, grooming behaviours, policy breaches that just weren't picked up, and we all have
01:27 to be really vigilant to the orange flags, even when we think, "Oh, maybe that person
01:32 was doing the right thing." We have to not question intent, but actually pick up and
01:38 act when we notice those professional boundary breaches.
01:41 Leah, does there also need to be more training for staff to recognise any behaviour amongst
01:46 kids which may show that they're being abused?
01:51 Yeah, absolutely. Look, our child sexual abuse, child abuse prevention system in organisations
01:57 is not just one thing. We have to have training for staff, absolutely. The National Royal
02:03 Commission recommended child safe organisations be rolled out across Australia. It's happened
02:10 in some states. In some states it's under law. In other states it's not quite there.
02:16 Those child safe organisations include policy, training, screening, and it's really, really
02:23 important that all of our organisations that are working with kids actually implement those
02:28 10 child safe organisations principles.
02:32 There are calls today for a national audit of childcare centres. Do you support that
02:37 move and what should be involved and looked at in that audit?
02:42 I would support us properly implementing the child safe organisation principles in all
02:48 child facing organisations. I don't think we can react solely to childcare. We still
02:54 have child sexual abuse in our schools. I think that we should in each state and territory
03:01 be regulating under law the child safe organisations principles so that it's a requirement for
03:08 all of our organisations that are working with kids to actually have those principles
03:13 in place, that parents can feel confident about that.
03:17 It is a grim question, Leah, but do kids at young ages need to be told what behaviour
03:23 is not right? Do we need to increase their awareness of this?
03:28 Yes, in developmentally appropriate ways. So we need to talk to our kids about their
03:35 bodies. They need to be able to know the names of their private parts. We've had disclosures
03:41 of child sexual abuse that have not been recognised as a disclosure because the child used a family
03:47 pet name for their private parts. Our kids need to know that they can name their private
03:52 parts, that they can talk about them and that other people aren't allowed to touch them.
03:58 Those are the sorts of conversations that we can have even with very young children
04:01 that are not distressing to them.
04:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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