Commission for Children and Young People reveals 2697 alleged cases of institutional child abuse
More than 300 complaints of child abuse against teachers were made to Victoria’s new reportable conduct scheme, which has experts reminding everyone that violence, sexual misconduct and neglect are not issues of the past.
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Hundreds of teachers have been accused of child abuse in a new scheme to protect kids from violence, sexual misconduct and neglect.
Victoria’s new reportable conduct scheme has received 2697 allegations from organisations in its first two years, relating to 1502 children with an average age of 10.
Teachers were the alleged perpetrator in 329 cases, prompting the incidents to be referred to the Victorian Institute of Teaching.
The Department of Justice and Community Safety was called in to investigate another 221 individuals who had an approved Working with Children Check and were found to have engaged in child abuse.
The Commission for Children and Young People, which oversees the scheme, also received 88 allegations from religious bodies but warned those numbers remained “concerningly low”, given the level of child sexual abuse exposed by the royal commission.
The commission’s annual report, tabled in parliament on Thursday, also revealed:
• Charges were laid by police in 43 cases, with another 81 still under investigation.
• Since the early childhood sector was included in the scheme this year, 27 per cent of reports came from organisations such as kindergartens and day care. There were 235 victims of alleged abuse aged 0-4, with most subjected to physical violence.
• Independent schools reported 149 incidents, Catholic schools reported 146 incidents and another 139 notifications were made by government schools.
The scheme requires organisation chiefs to notify the commission of allegations of reportable conduct within three days of becoming aware of alleged incidents.
Of the 1611 notifications received by the commission, 647 came from incidents in the state’s out-of-home care system.
The commission investigated 1100 claims of physical violence committed against a child, 400 accusations of sexual misconduct against a child — such as grooming behaviour — and 195 alleged sexual offences against a child.
There were another 293 reported cases of significant neglect of children.
Overall, 58 per cent of alleged victims were boys.
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The commission finalised its work on 1470 allegations and substantiated 462 of those cases.
Commissioner for Children and Young People Liana Buchanan said it was clear that “we are yet to fully absorb and act on the lessons” of the royal commission into institutional child abuse.
“Until we do, we can’t claim to be doing all we can to keep children and young people safe,” she said.
“The data in this report should serve as an urgent reminder that abuse of children by organisations is not a matter of history.”
Ms Buchanan said she was concerned about low reporting rates in some sectors, children excluded from investigations of alleged harm against them, and organisations struggling to manage conflicts of interest with allegations against people in senior positions.