AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
BY ANNETTE BLACKWELL AAP SEPTEMBER 18, 2013
IT should have raised suspicions at the NSW Department of Community Services when one name appeared three times on forms checking someone’s suitability to work with children.
Steve ‘Skip’ Larkins was listed as subject, applicant and contact, effectively approving himself to work with children from his position as principal officer of the Hunter Aboriginal Children Services (HACS).
But Larkins is now serving time for child pornography and indecent assault of children, and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told on Wednesday that no one who came into contact with his forms checked their veracity with anyone else at HACS.
Maree Walk, chief executive of community services for NSW Department of Family and Community Services, said she believes “it was an error” not to look more closely at the man who had legal parental responsibility for a number of Aboriginal children from 2003.
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