Inside childcare cottage where ‘born predator' David Tuck abused dozens of children

News.com.au

2 days ago

EXCLUSIVE
Warning: This article discusses the issue of childhood sexual abuse and could be triggering for some readers
This week, for the first time, one of Australia's most prolific child sex offenders is being unmasked, after his victims spent more than 25 years silenced due to Government advice which claimed that a statutory non-publication order on their names meant he also couldn't be named.
David Neil Tuck, who ran a number of child care services out of Batemans Bay, including an overnight childcare service called Bluemoor, is accused of molesting dozens of children aged as young as two.
Very little information is publicly available about the prolific pedophile, except for a single photo of his record of death, in a memorial book held at Worona Memorial Park in Sutherland.
Ominously, it reads 'A troubled Soul', followed by the words 'Loved by those who knew him.'
However, the truth of David Tuck's life and death is now being publicly exposed for the first time as part of a major news.com.au investigation into the sexual abuse crisis rocking Australia's early childcare industry.
Alarmingly, at the time David Tuck was licensed by the Eurobodalla Shire to run an overnight child care facility in Batemans Bay in 1994, he had already been charged with 10 counts of child sexual abuse in relation to allegations made between 1985 and 1986.
During the 1990s yet more children came forward with allegations of sexual abuse, but no charges were laid and Tuck was permitted to continue running his day and overnight child care centre from his bushland home in Batemans Bay, even though authorities knew he had children sleeping in his bed.
Finally on July 20, 2001, Tuck was charged with a single count of child sexual assault. Three days later, after a further eight children came forward to police with reports of sexual abuse, he suicided.
At the time, police believed he had sexually abused as many as 30 children, but that number has since grown.
The abuse is understood to have occurred in three different properties he ran as child care services in the coastal town, including in High Street, Bluemoor Road, and Karoola Crescent.
Pictures from inside the since sold properties reveal reminders that the locations were once used as day care centres, including the decals on walls.
A spokesperson from Eurobodalla Shire Council said they could not comment for legal reasons.
So who was David Tuck and what is known about this offender?
To those who knew him, the pedophile presented himself as a charismatic 'bogan'. He is described as having a noticeable burn mark across his face, after being scorched in an altercation, by a woman who was holding a hot clothing iron.
According to one of his survivors, Laura-Jane Singh (LJ), he would wear 'stubby shorts (and) a wife beater' most of the time at work.
'He smoked cigarettes, he drank Jim Beam straight out of the glass,' LJ said.
Tuck also is known to have worked at a number of other jobs all of which, without exception, gave him access to children.
This includes working as a gymnastics instructor at two YMCAs; as a nurse at a Children's Hospital west of Sydney; at a juvenile correctional facility; as carer for disabled children; as a school bus driver for intellectually disabled children; and as a guide on children's holiday camps which he ran.
At the time of his death, he was facing allegations of child sexual abuse spanning three decades. He was also known to have spent time in Victoria, NSW, Queensland, ACT and South Australia.
Creepy rules at Bluemoor family daycare
It's not just the pictures of Tuck's properties that appear creepy in retrospect – material sent to parents seems monstrous now.
In a written pamphlet obtained by news.com.au, parents at the Bluemoor facility in Batemans Bay were told in the strongest possible terms not to enter the cottage unannounced.
'PARENTS – PLEASE REMEMBER that a daycare home is also a family home and you are asked to respect the privacy of the family. PLEASE KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING … ALLOW TIME.'
Once inside, Tuck had a very different set of rules for the children including a mandatory 'open door policy' when it came to using the toilets – this rule also applied to children as old as 12.
'I remember being in the bath on one occasion,' LJ recalled.
'David sat on the toilet and watched us. Although he had his clothes on, I could see that his penis was stiff. I didn't understand what he was doing as I was too young to know but he was rubbing his penis hard, right in front of us.
'I remember the bath water being really hot and focusing on the heat instead of how weird it felt to be watched by David.
'He also always paid close attention to our genital area when he dried us … and he had a rule where we were told we couldn't wear underwear to bed (under our nighties) as our bodies 'needed to breathe'.'
Once night time arrived, the abuse got far worse. He would choose a child to sleep in his bed each night. What followed still haunts them.
Why Tuck's name was kept secret
Journalist and editor Chris Graham, who reported extensively on Tuck's crimes back in 2001 but who was unable to name him, due to a Government block, says he still thinks about the story and regrets not defying the legal advice and naming Tuck.
'He was a serial predator,' says Mr Graham.
'He was a master manipulator and a master at ingratiating himself with adults in order to prey on their children. I mean it gives me chills talking about it. He was obviously just born a predator.
'And I wish I had just told everybody David Tuck did this and if your children went to this childcare centre, there's a reasonable likelihood that they were assaulted by this man. To this day, I don't know how many victims there are, I shudder to think, I mean he had engineered unfettered access to hundreds of helpless children and he was licensed to do it by the government.'
Despite this Tuck never spent a single night behind bars for his offences.
Nor did he see the inside of a cell after he was found guilty of more than 50 counts of defrauding the council by forging parent signatures to obtain additional child care rebates.
Those who have been harmed by him, however, continue to pay a price for his actions.
'One of the things that doesn't get talked about enough is the reality of what this does to a person,' says Laura-Jane Singh, who was seven years old when she met Tuck, and began attending Bluemoor overnight childcare service.
'I'm now 35 years old, I'm well-educated, I have a great career and I'm a mother, but this is something I will struggle with for the rest of my life.
'I have struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, homelessness, sexual exploitation, survival sex work, I've been disconnected from my culture, my family, my siblings, and to this day still struggle with issues like suicidality and self-harm.
'Victims are made to feel ashamed to come forward. And then on top of that, they're made to feel ashamed to talk about how it impacts them.
'The reason we are left to suffer in silence is because the services available are few and far between, and (they) are often ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of multiple incidents of abuse.
'This is compounded by the fact that stories like ours are yet to be told. So it means that there is no baseline of what this looks like.'
LJ – who is a proud Aboriginal woman – says there are even fewer services for Indigenous survivors.
'Where do we go? Who believes us? And where do we feel safe enough to share our stories so we can heal?' she said.
'The thing for me is that we need to speak more about what happens when a child is sexually abused over multiple years and the risk of re-victimisation.
'I have had more sexually violent relationships than I've had consenting ones because my initial understanding of consent was forcibly taken away from me.
'Then if we look at the education provided in schools, in high schools, even in universities, it is inadequate. So if you have experienced sexual abuse, where do you go to relearn what consent means and how do you navigate your life without that?
'We need to remove the stigma of both child and adult survivors of sexual abuse and any sexual violence of any kind.'
LJ is now an academic whose work centres around advocacy for Aboriginal young people engaged with child protection. Despite being extremely highly qualified and respected in her field she still faces discrimination and prejudice.
'I can tell you that I have never felt believed by police. I have never felt believed at a hospital after a sexual assault. At times I've never been believe by the people closest to me in my life because there is assumptions made of child sexual abuse survivors and how they engage in sexualised behaviour,' she said.
'And even in 2025, even with all the reform and change, the responsibility is still put on us, rather than the systems and the perpetrators, and until that changes, people like myself and all the other survivors out there who have been re-victimised will continue to blame ourselves when it is not our fault.
'No person, regardless of whatever situation they are in, whatever they are wearing, whether they are substance-affected or not, is ever to blame for being sexually abused or sexually assaulted.'
LJ and fellow survivor Hailey*, who are both speaking out as part of news.com.au's investigation into sexual abuse in Australia's early child care industry, say they are doing so because they want all survivors of child sexual abuse to have access to the support services which they never did.
'People should just be believed regardless of their history, where they're from, what they look like, what their background is,' says LJ.
'First Nations or not, it just shouldn't be a thing. If someone comes forward, child or adult, and says I have been abused or I have been raped or I've been sexually assaulted. They should just be believed.'