By Jordan Baker and Amber Schultz
As horrified parents grapple with the latest sexual abuse scandal at a childcare centre, which has forced 1200 preschoolers to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, an abuse survivors’ collective has called for a ban on male workers.
Louise Edmonds, a founding member of the Independent Collective of Survivors but speaking independently, says the safety of children must be prioritised over all else.
Louise Edmonds, a founding member of the Independent Collective of Survivors, has called for men to be removed from intimate care spaces.Credit: Janie Barrett
“With growing evidence and lived experience pointing to the disproportionate involvement of men in cases of child sexual abuse, we must ask difficult questions,” she said. “In my view, men have no place in daycare centres, not out of prejudice, but out of a duty to prioritise the safety of children over the optics of equality. Safeguarding must come before ideology.”
Others argue a ban is not the answer, saying sexual offending – which, crime statistics show, is primarily perpetrated by men – is not the only type of abuse plaguing childcare centres, and that the system must be strengthened to ensure all kinds of child maltreatment are either prevented, or quickly identified, reported and acted upon.
Edmonds’ comments come as NSW pledges a trial of CCTV in childcare centres and moves to ban people who have been refused a Working With Children Check (WWCC) from appealing the decision.
Concerns about safety in the early childhood sector have intensified amid a growing number of serious allegations against childcare workers.
In separate incidents over a single month last year, three NSW childcare workers were charged with sexual touching of children or, in one of the cases, child abuse. Last November, Australia’s worst paedophile – childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith – was sentenced to life in prison for 307 sexual offences against 73 victims over almost 20 years.
This week, two men, one of whom was a childcare worker, have been charged with serious abuse of young children in Victoria. Joshua Dale Brown is accused of abusing eight children at different centres in Melbourne, and police said he and the other man were known to each other.
Earlier this year, documents tabled in NSW parliament detailed myriad cases of physical abuse in childcare centres, in which babies and toddlers were forcibly dragged, pulled, kicked, force-fed or used as a mop. In one case, a worker repeatedly slapped a baby, laughing as it screamed hysterically, as a second worker filmed the incident.
Between 2 and 4 per cent of Australia’s early childcare educators and pre-school teachers are male. Of the 142 sexual offences on non-school educational premises in NSW in the year to March 2025, all but two of the alleged offenders were men.
Recent childcare sex abuse incidents in NSW/ACT
- In October 2024, a 51-year-old man who worked at a centre in Glen Innes in the Northern Tablelands was arrested and charged with intentionally sexually touching a child under 10 years against eight victims.
- That same month, Sydney daycare worker Quoc Phu Tong was charged with alleged sexual touching of a young child at Only About Children in Seaforth and common assault. He pleaded guilty to sexual touching in January this year.
- Also in October 2024, another Sydney childcare worker, in his 20s, was charged with more than 10 counts of child abuse after allegedly filming himself abusing young boys while in the classroom and bathroom during the same period. He also allegedly pleasured himself in a classroom in front of children.
- In 2022, Australia’s worst paedophile, Ashley Paul Griffith, was arrested on 1600 offences in childcare centres in Brisbane, Sydney and Italy, dating between 2007 and 2022. In 2024, he pleaded guilty to more than 300 charges committed in Brisbane and Italy and was sentenced to life in prison. He is appealing the sentence.
- In 2022, Muhammad Ali, then 30, was charged with three counts of committing an act of indecency against three children at a Canberra daycare centre. A four-year-old raised the alarm to his mother, saying Ali had touched him. He was found guilty on one count in 2023.
Edmonds is a lived experience survivor and has reported physical abuse against her daughter in a daycare setting. The Australian Federal Police also investigated her complaint against a male childcare worker, who appeared to be aroused while playing with children; however, the man escaped criminal charges.
“In environments where children are voiceless and deeply vulnerable, risk must be mitigated, not rationalised,” she said.
However, the chief executive of Early Childhood Australia, Sam Page, said male educators were important role models for children.
“We should be setting up systems that don’t let any educator engage in any kind of abusive practice,” she said. “We should have the right staffing levels, the right practices in place that will protect the good educators, and make it impossible for bad actors.”
Georgie Dent, CEO of the parent advocacy organisation The Parenthood, didn’t support a ban on male workers either. “Children benefit from having positive male and female role models in their lives,” she said.
Former child abuse detective turned educator Kristi McVee said a gender-based ban would not solve the problem. “Banning male educators is a reaction, not a solution,” she said.
“It’s not gender that creates a predator, it’s secrecy, unchecked power and silence. We need rigorous vetting, strong safeguards and trauma-informed oversight. But we also need more good men in all forms of education, not fewer – men who model safety, emotional intelligence and accountability … [who are] responsible for holding peers to the highest standard.”
McVee said she had heard from contacts in education that some female teachers were refusing to mentor young males, while some parents were threatening to pull their children from men’s classrooms.
Parents’ advocacy groups say children benefit from having both male and female role models.Credit: Louie Douvis
McVee said parents and educators also needed to be aware of physical abuse and is calling for better training for workers to spot signs of abuse. “It’s not everyone, but it could be anyone – you just can’t blindly and blankly trust anyone,” she said.
Jesse Cale, an associate professor from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University, said the sector needed to get better at scrutinising the employment history and references of people applying for jobs.
If there were concerns about male workers, the relatively small number of men applying meant that a rigorous check of their background and references would not require intensive resources. “[It] should make things a lot easier, in terms of being able to identify and put resources towards doing checks that are more comprehensive into the backgrounds of these individuals,” Cale said.
Men already face obstacles within the industry, some saying that parents object to their presence in the centre, or that they are not allowed to change nappies. Veterans within the sector said, on the condition of anonymity, that they expected more men to leave.
Childcare experts said more effective responses to the crisis would include improving ways for workers to report suspicious behaviour that might not meet the threshold of an alert to police or child protection, such as educators who took children out of the sight of others or who had an overly familiar relationship with the children.
They also called for a national register of childcare workers which would record each worker’s employment history, qualifications and any bans or restrictions and could be accessed by prospective employers, so workers who have raised suspicions could not easily jump to another employer or to another state.
Victoria announced a register on Tuesday, and it’s on the agenda for federal and state early education ministers. Acting NSW Education Minister Courtney Houssos said NSW supported one too. “Whilst we are encouraged by the response from other jurisdictions [to a register], NSW will act swiftly and independently if national reform does not move fast enough,” she said.
Victoria also said it would enforce a phone ban in centres from September, with fines from $50,000. At present, phone bans are optional.
NSW Premier Chris Minns said his state would legislate to stop people who had been refused a WWCC from appealing the decision. “It makes a mockery of the Working with Children Check – it’s a loophole that cannot exist,” he said.
The allegations about physical abuse in childcare centres prompted NSW to commission a review by former NSW deputy ombudsman Chris Wheeler. As a result of that inquiry, NSW will trial CCTV cameras in childcare centres and establish an independent early childhood regulator.
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clarification
This story has been updated to make it clear that Louise Edmonds’ views were her own, and she wasn’t speaking on behalf of the Independent Collective of Survivors.