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CONVICTED sex offenders are secretly overturning bans on working with children to pursue jobs as school bus drivers, teachers, sports coaches and even youth workers. The Daily Telegraph has learned that 89 people formerly prohibited from child-related employment due to their crimes - often involving minors - have won exemptions, issued without public notification, since June 2003. But each of the 89 are at no risk of reoffending, the state's official child advocate said said today. Since 2003, the offenders – who were prohibited from working with children because of their crimes – have won exemptions from the Working With Children Check, a system that red flags high-risk persons to employers. Most of the 89 exemptions involved middle-aged men convicted of carnal knowledge committed decades ago. Others were more recent, with one 38-year-old man permitted to work as a sports coach despite a conviction for assault with indecency five years earlier. NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People Gillian Calvert, who signed 59 of the exemptions, today said she would never have approved the cases if an individual was any danger to young people. "I have not given an exemption to anybody who I think is a risk to children," she told ABC Radio. "Serious sex offenders don't get through our system. "It's only in rare circumstances that people are granted exemptions and that is where there is no risk to children." Ms Calvert said each person who applies for an exemption is thoroughly assessed. "We look at their entire work history, we look at their criminal history, we look at their personal circumstances (and) we'll often get a full psychiatric assessment of them as well," she said. She said she had rejected several requests and opposed applications through the courts. But there were cases where exemptions were appropriate, the commissioner said. "If somebody has been convicted of carnal knowledge 30 years ago but then went on to marry that person and have children and grandchildren, you would not want them to be captured by the scheme," Ms Calvert said. "So you need a mechanism to exempt them." She also said she approved of plans to adopt the child abduction alert system, Amber Alert, to help find missing children. "I think we all feel very anxious when we hear stories about kids being abducted (and) it feels like there's not much you can do about it," she said. "I think that's what's so good about this Amber Alert. "It gives us something practical that everybody in the community can participate in to try and protect children." Under the scheme, radio and television broadcasters, RTA roadside message boards and taxi and public transport dispatch systems will be required to relay, at 15-minute intervals, details of missing children. Last night, child protection and victim groups expressed alarm at the process and that the community, especially parents, were kept in ignorance of the risks posed. Victims of Crime Assistance League spokesman Howard Brown said the public deserved to know more about these secret approvals. He said the community was operating under the "false assumption" that the Working with Children Check was there to protect them from people such as sexual offenders. "Is there such a shortage of people without sexual offence convictions that we must go out of our way to find people with convictions to working with our children?" he said. Mr Brown said a single conviction was not always indicative of a one-off crime. Research showed that pedophiles typically assaulted up to 30 children before being caught once, he said. Just four of the exemptions to the ban on child-related jobs involved any ongoing conditions. The Child Protection (Prohibited Employment) Act 1998 makes it an offence for a person convicted of a serious sex offence to apply for, undertake or remain in child-related jobs. But a prohibited person can apply for an exemption to the Commission for Children and Young People, or less commonly, the Administrative Decisions Tribunal or the NSW Industrial Commission. Commission for Children and Young People Director Virginia Neighbour said the exemptions issued are to applicants deemed by the commissioner to be no risk to children. "Generally, those who make exemption applications to the commission have either very old or low-level sexual offences, such as carnal knowledge where there is a small age difference between offender and victim," she said. She said the process for deciding whether to lift the child-related employment ban was an administrative one. Advocates for the Survivors of Child Abuse spokeswoman Dr Cathy Kezelman said the secret exemptions "rang alarm bells". "What checks are there to ensure the community is not placed at risk here?" she said. Daily Telegraph (8-8-2005) |
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