Keeping Children Safe: Body Safety Australia CEO Deanne Carson featured in Pick a Lane newsletter.

Originally published in Semann and Slattery’s Pick a Lane Newsletter.

Keeping children safe

This week there has been widespread media coverage about children from an early childhood centre in NSW who were allegedly sexually abused by a former worker.

It is alleged that the offender abused 30 children; 16 either at or from the centre ranging in age from 16 months to 15 years. We also know that in addition the abuse of those children was shared online.

Pick a Lane interviewed Deanne Carson, the CEO of Body Safety Australia, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing childhoods free from violence. At Semann & Slattery we want to help educators and teachers understand how this could happen in our sector, and what we can all do to help minimise the risk.

Deanne started by pointing out that educators and teachers are good at looking out for incidences of contact offending, but says for most, the production of child sexual abuse material (images, videos and live streamed footage that shows the sexual abuse or sexual exploitation of children) is not on their radar.

She shared horrific statistics that show the incidence of child sexual abuse material traded in Australia has doubled this year from last year with 7.4 million files traded in one month alone. Individuals are producing more of this material and more individuals are consuming it.

As many would know from child protection training there are two types of offenders, those who are paedophiles, who say that their primary sexual attraction is towards children and who choose roles that give them access to the greatest number of children; and then there are the opportunistic sex offenders who are aroused by a child and then act on that arousal.

Those who consume child sexual abuse material can fit into both categories. Those who produce it may be doing it for gratification, but they also do it to make a profit from its sale and production.

As with all sexual abuse crimes, production of child sexual abuse material is a gendered crime – 95% of offenders are male.

SO HOW COULD IT HAPPEN IN AN EDUCATION AND CARE CENTRE?

According to Deanne, ‘when an individual grooms a child, he grooms a community first, so if an accusation is made the adults respond in disbelief – they feel that the accused is the last person who would abuse anyone.’ She says we let our guard down, because the abuser has spent months (often as long as 6-12 months) gaining the trust of parents, directors and fellow educators.

It is easy for an abusive educator to have a phone or smart watch on them at work or to utilise the readily available technology where cameras can be concealed in items such as jewellery or badges. Deanne drew attention to the fact that the offending can also happen off site.

For example, when a trusted educator is also engaged as a babysitter. She talks of red flags, such as an educator showing favouritism towards particular children, of initiating touch with children, and establishing relationships with children and their family outside of the work setting.

Deanne stated that while this is a gendered crime, of course not all male educators are a risk to children. And identified a point of action, ‘We tend to see male educators as either gods or monsters’— ‘and we need to change this by examining behaviour and asking if it is appropriate in a professional setting and between an adult and a child.’

HOW CAN WE STOP THIS HAPPENING AT OUR SERVICE?

Furthermore, Deanne sees the implementation of the ten National Principles for Child Safe Organisations recommended by The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, as key to addressing the issue.

The adoption of Child Safe Standards is compulsory for Victorian education and care services but not yet compulsory in other States and Territories. Deanne would like to see ‘every service establishing a child safe committee of staff and parents charged with introducing standards based on the National Principles in their centre within a set time frame.’

She also believes we need to empower children to be part of their own protection. To invite organisations like hers into services to do training with children, to have children help co-design codes of conduct, to ask them to draw maps of their centre talking about where they feel most safe and least safe.

But above all Deanne wants educators and teachers to have ‘courageous conversations’. What sorts of courageous conversations? She says we need to ‘talk to children about penises and vaginas without being scared that their parents will be upset’. We need to ‘address concerning behaviour with educators without being worried that we are accusing them of being sexual predators’.

We need to talk about the fact that child sexual abuse happens, and that people make and profit from the production of child sexual abuse material.

We need to talk about the fact that sometimes, luckily rarely, but sometimes, even our education and care centres are not safe for children.