Usb with Child Porn LED to Larkins' Arrest

9 News
September 19, 2013

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/09/19/12/40/no-action-on-abuse-rumours-inquiry-hears

Steve Larkins had long been suspected of abuse but continued to work with vulnerable children until the discovery of child pornography sparked the investigation which finally brought him down.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told on Thursday that, although there had been rumours within the Aboriginal community dating back to when Larkins worked with the Scouts, he kept his senior position with Hunter Aboriginal Children Services (HACS) because he had forged a working with children check.

He was only exposed as a pedophile when a work colleague found indecent material on a flash drive belonging to him.

Karen Barwick, HACS special projects manager, told the commission another HACS worker called her to his house in 2011 to show her the pornographic pictures he had discovered.

"I looked at the screen ... (and I saw) files of pornographic pictures. I asked 'whose is it?' and was told they believed it was Steve Larkins'," Ms Barwick said.

Ms Barwick added that she told them she did not care to whom it belonged and that "we needed to go directly to police."

She drove both of them to the police station with the USB drive.

Larkins, who had been the chief executive of HACS, was jailed the following year for child pornography, forgery and child sex abuse offences - the latter dating back to the early 90s.

Ms Barwick had spent 15 years with the NSW Department of Social Services (DoCS) and said she felt Larkins deliberately gave her a heavy workload so she had no time to investigate rumours about him.

"I was trying to get the numbers up to meet funding obligations for the organisation," Ms Barwick said.

"The one thing Steve did was throw a lot of work at me and I guess, on reflection when I look back on it, it was to keep me busy."

Jacqualine Henderson, administrative officer and case officer at HACS, told the commission she initially dismissed rumours about Larkins as "hogwash" but he became very agitated when she eventually confronted him in 2003.

"I'll walk down to my solicitors right now and have youse all for defamation," was his response, according to Ms Henderson, who is also Larkins' second cousin.

She said she then asked a case worker to keep an eye on Larkins.

Ms Henderson, who left HACS as a fulltime worker in 2003 but continued as a member and sometime chair of the management committee, broke down in the witness box at the conclusion of her evidence.

"He has used me and my community as a goddamn puppet," she said.

Ms Henderson said she had been unaware of Larkins' application for a working-with-children check for her and himself in 2003.

The commission heard on Wednesday that Larkins had justified it as part of a "batch application".

The public hearings in Sydney have learned how Larkins' control of HACS was crucial to him getting his working-with-children check.

With DoCS and the Commission for Children and Young People failing to fully check Larkins' application, he was able to obtain legal parental responsibility for Aboriginal children in care - and even had a boy live with him after fostering him.