NSW Police worried child abusers who 'shop around' care centres are going undetected

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

The head of NSW Police's Child Abuse Squad has detailed how offenders are moving between childcare centres without being detected.
A state parliamentary inquiry into child care on Thursday examined the police processes for investigating cases of neglect and abuse in the sector.
Detective Superintendent Linda Howlett, the Commander of the State Crime Command's Child Abuse Squad, told the inquiry offenders were likely to "shop around" and work at childcare centres that did not have strong measures in place to prevent abuse.
She said this meant crucial "red flags" were being missed.
"What people don't really understand is a lot of these offenders are very, very smart, they've got a name in mind," Superintendent Howlett said.
"So what they will do is they will centre shop, they'll go to a number of centres and work there. And if they've got the appropriate systems in place that they can't offend, they'll move on to the next centre.
Superintendent Howlett said her squad — which has about 235 staff across the state — was working to identify these workers.
But she said it was difficult because police did not have access to information on why they had moved between centres.
"I personally would like to see a database that actually has all those red flags included in it," she said.
"It might not lead to a criminal offence but it should be what I consider to be intel-based."
An added challenge, Superintendent Howlett said, was a reluctance among parents and educators to report incidents to police.
"My advice to parents and to anyone would be, do not approach the director of the centre," she said.
"Because at the end of the day, I'm probably a little cynical, but the director doesn't want to lose the business, they don't want a bad reputation, they're in panic mode because parents are then thinking that their children have abused."
Superintendent Howlett pointed to examples where parents had approached the centre and had been "talked out" of taking any allegations further.
"A lot of (centres) will do their own investigations before they report it to the police, or they'll have a conversation with a person of interest and…contaminate further evidence that might come about," she said.
"Or they'll go and question the child itself, and that's something we totally disagree with. It's up to us to be interviewing the child because we've got specialist investigators who focus upon that."
Quizzed on the role of CCTV in childcare centres, Superintendent Howlett said it played an important role in gathering evidence.
"Because they're working they forget that the CCTV is there," she said.
She told the inquiry her "strongest recommendation" was that centres should be required to always have at least two workers in a room with a child.
"I know centres aren't agreeing with that, they're saying they can't employ those people," Superintendent Howlett said.
"But at the end of the day, this sector is earning a lot of money, and what price do we put on the safety of our children?
"Once a child has been offended against, that would have ramifications for the rest of their lives."