Male educator pleads guilty to sexually based offences against Northern Beaches child

Before continuing to engage with this piece readers of The Sector should be aware that it discusses the abuse of a child whilst in the care of an early childhood education and care (ECEC) service, and that it may prove distressing. 

Readers should consider their own circumstances before proceeding with the piece. 

A male early childhood educator was sentenced to two years in prison last week for the intentional sexual touching of a child in his care after pleading guilty to the offence in January this year. 

The 35 year old man committed the offence at a long day care centre in the Northern Beaches suburb of Seaforth, in Sydney, during the course of his employment as a casual educator. 

He committed the offence in view of two other educators, a crime for which the magistrate handed down a sentence of two years with a non-parole period of 12 months, the maximum possible sentence given the jurisdictional limits of the local court.

Victim impact statements read to the court on behalf of the child’s mother and father, who were not present in the courtroom, detailed their anguish at the crime against their “beautiful happy little boy”.

The victim’s mother said the offending was “intentional and abhorrent” and had “left a permanent scar on our family”.

“You abused your position of power,” the boy’s mother said in her victim impact statement. “He came to you for comfort and he was met with the kind of behaviour that is every parent’s worst nightmare. The weeks and months since have left our family under a permanent dark cloud.”

The mother said the time since the offence has been “the toughest, saddest period for us as a family. We now see the world in a different way.”

“You have taken a piece of my little boy’s innocence and for that I will never forgive you.”

A statement from the victim’s father said that they had witnessed the “devastating impact” it has had on their son’s behaviour, with the boy becoming “anxious and emotional” around adults, including “people who genuinely love and care for him the most”.

“You took something from our child that should never have been taken: his sense of safety, his trust and sense of innocence … The guilt we feel as parents at not being able to stop this is unbearable,” his statement said.

Both parents were critical of the approved provider operating the service, saying they were not informed of the offending against their child until eight days after the incident occurred and seven days after the educator who witnessed it says she told management about it.

The police fact sheet around the case further claimed that there were delays in the incident being reported to the Regulatory Authority and the police. 

“The fact we should be left in the dark for over a week goes beyond failure,” the boy’s mother said, with the father saying in his statement that the provider had “failed to uphold the most basic level of reporting.”

In a statement about the incident the approved provider acknowledged the significant impact the incident had on the child and family, offering “sincere and heartfelt apologies” to them for the distress they have endured.

“The justice system has run its course, and we welcome the fact that the individual concerned has now been held to account,” the statement continued, highlighting the measures taken by the provider to strengthen its processes, training and systems along with engaging independent experts to regularly review its practices.

The magistrate said that while the nature of the sexual touching against the victim was “towards the lower end of the scale”, the fact that the man had offended against a child under his care was an “aggravating factor” in the case, as was the fact the victim was a “vulnerable, very young child”.

The man’s lawyer submitted to the magistrate that the man had “a lack of understanding of the seriousness and wrongness of this action” but that he now “deeply regrets the actions and realises the wrong he has done”.