Child Checks Failed, Abuse Inquiry Hears

Sky News
September 20, 2013

http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=907811


The stories from the first week of public hearings by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse were ones of bureaucratic box ticking, buck passing, administrative laxity and echoes of the Keystone cops.

However the real story was how that depressing mix allowed a man, known to police as a possible child abuser, to prey on some of Australia's most vulnerable kids - Aboriginal children in care.

Steve 'Skip' Larkins, 47, is now in jail for child pornography, indecent assault and forgery. He gets out next January.

It took almost two decades to nail him. Across those years there were rumours, whistleblowers, secret compensation payments, an apprehended violence order and a DPP recommendation for prosecution that came to nothing.

All of this left a paper trail that Steve Larkins managed to shred as he tangled with the bureaucracy of the NSW Department of Community Services, The Children's Guardian and the NSW Police.

You can follow that trail in 274 documents on the commission's website www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au, under public hearings and the exhibits hyperlink.

Scouts Australia and the Hunter Aboriginal Children Services (HACS) were the places where Larkins had mostly unchecked access to children.

With Scouts it was because no one knew how to handle complaints effectively and because the organisation wanted to protect its reputation. The commission was told the Scouts insurer has paid compensation to victims of sexual predators.

With the non-government organisation, HACS, where Larkins as chief executive had parental responsibility for children in care, it was because he packed the management committee with people he could control.

It was also because the agencies whose job it was to protect children seemed to be more concerned about getting paperwork in order than checking what they were told, primarily by Larkins.

The commission listened first not to the institutions but to Larkins' victims.

One witness said he was 12 when he was sexually abused by Larkins, who was a Scout leader with Stockton Scouts. That was in 1992.

'I felt belittled, dirty, wrong and confused about the incident,' he said.

Once outgoing, he became introverted and could not talk to his family: 'as I thought I had done something wrong'.

He did not tell anyone until 2000. Larkins has had a profound effect on his life.

Another witness told how in 1997 when he was a child he thought he was going camping with Scout mates but instead Larkins took them to his house where he indecently assaulted him.

The boy locked himself in the bathroom terrified. He never went back to Scouts but about four months later Larkins rang his home and 'I lost it'. He told his mother what had happened and she took him to Newcastle police. 'I felt good telling police as I thought something was going to be done,' the witness told the commission.

He said he never heard from police again.

The policeman, Nigel Turney who interviewed the boy, said at the time he considered the seriousness of the victim's allegations to be at the 'lower end of the scale'.

It was three months before the Director of Public Prosecutions got the file.

The commission has examined the police log records and discovered missing entries and incorrect information.

About 12 months after the boy and his mother went to police, a police entry dated July 1998 said the DPP had advised not to proceed with prosecution.

The DPP had in fact made a written recommendation in June 1998 that Larkins be charged with aggravated indecent assault.

In the end the boy and his mother decided not to go ahead with his complaint. Counsel advising the commission Gail Furness, SC, says the delays and mishandling by police probably contributed to the decision.

The commission heard how DoCS assessed Larkins as a medium risk in a working with children check.

This assessment was based on incorrect police records, which recorded a charge of indecent assault rather than an investigation. The assessment was sent to Larkins because no one at DoCS twigged it as strange that he was the applicant and the HACS contact person.

As fate would have it, around this time responsibility for HACS was transferred to the Office of the Commissioner for Young People and Larkins asked that office to review his working with children check.

There were no rules around how this should be done so they just talked to Larkins who provided a false statutory declaration and a forged letter. These were to support his claim he was not working directly with children.

All the boxes were ticked and the medium-risk assessment was withdrawn. His slate was then clean, and years later he went about fostering a boy because legally he could.

This inquiry is into how institutions responded to child sexual abuse. It is early days yet but what is emerging from the first public airing is that the responses are shaped by the ethos of the institutions.

Bureaucracies do what bureaucracies do - tick and flick, while organisations founded to serve their God and the betterment of society do what they do - protect reputation, and terrible things can happen in organisations where no one really knows the rules.