Paedophiles are easy to detect when their grooming tactics are understood. It is in fact the failure to report by institutional leaders that allows them to predate many children often over the course of years if not decades.

Recent media has it that a Victorian childcare worker is believed to have had access to over a thousand children while working at almost twenty centres across the State. This illustrates the point. Investigation will almost certainly show that this man would have been previously observed acting suspiciously by multiple operators, but they failed to report. The Victorian Child Care sector has systemic failings in child safeguarding and the twenty operators have questions to answer given their failure to meet their duty of care.

There are also suggestions that the Victorian Working with Children legislation remains unfit for purpose and is long overdue for revision. There is nothing more disheartening to the victim-survivor community than to see those with credible concerns over their behaviour with kids being permitted to retain their card.

Key takeaways

1. Detecting paedophiles is straight forward for those trained to spot grooming behaviours.
2. Those in leadership who choose not to report are committing a criminal offence – “failure to protect a child”.
3. Child safe legislation must be practically enforceable.
4. Child safe regulators must enforce the legislation and apply statutory and criminal penalties, on the organisations and individuals who are breech.
5. Nationally consistent legislation is essential to avoid paedophiles relocating between jurisdictions to continue their offending.