The childcare worker accused of abusing babies and toddlers in daycare had been fired from at least three other childcare centres before he was arrested, this masthead can reveal, and his employers failed to pick up glaring errors on his resume.
Regulators and childcare providers missed crucial details about alleged paedophile Joshua Brown, failed to pass on or escalate previous investigations into his conduct, and then led detectives on a wild goose chase by inadvertently handing them incorrect information about his work history.
Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences.
This masthead has uncovered new details of Brown’s movement around the childcare sector, as his former employers warn of a “black box” of government bureaucracy, where reported concerns are not passed on, leaving providers and parents in the dark.
More than a fortnight after police revealed Brown had been charged with 70 counts of abuse, including child rape, families at centres where he worked say they are still scrambling for information about their children’s exposure, with some weighing legal action.
The alleged discovery by detectives of a cache of child sex abuse material in May sparked an “urgent investigation” into 26-year-old Brown, and has plunged Australia’s childcare sector, long dominated by private providers and safety scandals, into crisis.
At the time of his arrest, Brown still had a valid Working With Children Check. As police raced to identify his alleged victims, they discovered Brown had worked at more than 20 childcare centres across the state, often moving around within the country’s biggest childcare chains, G8 and Affinity, or doing relief-teaching work.
This masthead has now confirmed Brown was previously fired from at least three childcare centres – two of them just months before police alleged he abused eight toddlers and babies, and contaminated children’s food with bodily fluids, at G8’s Creative Gardens centre in Point Cook between 2022 and 2023.
Detectives are also investigating further suspected abuse at Affinity’s Papilio Early Learning centre in Essendon, where Brown worked until police arrested him on May 12.
Both G8 and Affinity have publicly said they only found out about the charges against Brown on July 1, when a suppression order on the case was lifted as authorities mobilised an unprecedented STI testing regime for children at the centres where he worked. The publicly listed G8 repeated that claim when answering multiple sets of questions posed by the Australian Securities Exchange.
Police visit the Papilio Early Learning centre in Essendon in early July. Credit: Justin McManus
This masthead has since confirmed some centres owned by the chains were hit with search warrants as early as May as detectives pulled Brown’s work records and spoke to staff about his movements to compile their initial list of exposed workplaces.
Affinity clarified that while the company was not briefed on the extent of the charges against Brown until July 1, it had already been co-operating with police.
Yet sources close to the investigation, as well as another provider served with a search warrant, said the nature of the investigation as a suspected child abuse case appeared on the order to hand over evidence from the sex crimes squad. “It was written there clearly. We knew how serious it was,” said a manager at a small provider who was later approached by police. “We just couldn’t tell families, of course, until the suppression order lifted.”
The Australian Securities Exchange cannot comment on any of its interactions with specific companies, but misleading the market can trigger further investigation and consequences.
Meanwhile, errors in records handed over to police by G8 and Affinity meant police had to drastically revise Brown’s work history this week, as it was revealed five centres where he worked had been left off their initial list, and that he had worked at the Essendon site where further abuse allegations are now being investigated for a full six months longer than first thought. In another case, tips from the public and further police investigation revealed Brown never worked at one centre on the list at all.
There is no suggestion any of Brown’s former employers knowingly misled police. Many, including G8 and Affinity, now say they want an overhaul of oversight within the sector, including a national registry of childcare educators – as schools already have – and they are rolling out internal improvements such as CCTV cameras.
But some of Brown’s employers also failed to pick up glaring errors on his resume at the time of hiring him, according to former workplaces and associates of Brown, who say his CV exaggerated or “fudged the details”.
In March 2024, Brown was fired from D.O.T.S Occupational Therapy for Children at Footscray after five weeks of work, the clinic’s director Hannah Dunn told this masthead. The resume Brown gave at the time did not align with the work history later released by authorities, she said.
While Dunn noted people were rightly asking questions about why someone with so many job changes would be hired, she stressed all his previous positions were listed “for more than a year on the copy of the resume we hold and some as long as five years”. She said Brown was not part of the clinical occupational therapy team at D.O.T.S and was let go because “he was not a good fit for our practice”.
Small provider Wallaby Childcare also told this masthead it had fired Brown after just five weeks in early 2021 for misconduct not related to child protection. “We felt he did not align with our company standards or values,” the centre said.
Less than a month later, Brown was fired from Nido Early School’s Werribee centre, this time after just three weeks on the job, for failing to fill in a report correctly recording an incident between two children. The termination was only months before his alleged offending in Point Cook.
The revelations come as this masthead has also confirmed two internal investigations into Brown by G8, which substantiated claims he had “forcibly” grabbed children in his care in 2023 and 2024, were never passed on to his next employers, including Affinity.
The Creative Garden Early Learning Centre where accused man Joshua Dale Brown had worked.Credit: Justin McManus
Both cases were reported to the Department of Education and Victoria’s Commission for Children and Young People, as well as police, by G8. Despite the substantiated findings, Brown’s Working With Children clearance was never escalated for review.
Within months, he was working at another large childcare chain, Affinity, which told this masthead it only learnt of those investigations against Brown when news of them broke last week after his arrest.
Affinity said all the required checks were in place when Brown arrived as a candidate, but the organisation now supported “sector-wide reforms, including a national educator register, to strengthen oversight across all providers”.
Affinity and at least five other providers said they hadn’t given Brown a reference themselves. Others wouldn’t comment.
Phil Noble runs the popular karate dojo in Hoppers Crossing where Brown claimed to work as a weapons instructor between 2013 and 2017, according to a resume first reported by Nine’s A Current Affair.
“He never worked for us, he’s definitely exaggerating there,” Noble told this masthead. “He came to us at 12 years old, and became a black belt at about 16 so like all the senior kids he’d help me out on the mat at times. But he was never alone with kids.”
Noble said Brown left the dojo around the time he graduated from high school. After the COVID pandemic, around 2022, Noble recalled that Brown returned again for a couple of training sessions and to ask for work.
Joshua Dale Brown worked at more than 20 childcare centres across Melbourne and Geelong.
“He wanted to help me teach, but I said no, I didn’t have the work for him. He had blue hair, tattoos and painted nails by then, and he told me he’d been working in childcare. He didn’t come back.”
The Dance Network in Hoppers Crossing, where Brown’s CV claimed he’d done administration work since 2019, also denied he had ever been an employee.
“The resume is misleading and inaccurate,” a spokesperson said. Brown only attended the school four years ago alongside his parent and sister, who was a student at the time, they said.
Police are still investigating Brown’s movements through the childcare sector, combing through hundreds of CrimeStoppers reports and interviewing witnesses, and warn more revisions to this work history may follow.
Neither G8 or Affinity could rule out more changes on Friday, as “further checks continued”.
Multiple former employers of Brown told this masthead that his case has exposed a terrifying “lack of visibility within the sector”.
Privacy and Fair Work obligations favoured educators rather than child protection, they said, meaning some providers used an “unspoken code” to warn each other of issues.
In another recent case reviewed by this masthead, a Google search revealed that a childcare applicant was the same woman who defrauded another centre of tens of thousands of dollars. But the provider said they received no warning about her, outside media reports.
“Even when we report people, we’re never told what happens,” they said. “I’ve never heard of someone actually getting their working with children check revoked.”
The government did not answer detailed questions about the Brown matter.
Only about a third of substantiated investigations into educators are referred for a review of their Working With Children check.
Law firm Arnold, Thomas & Becker said that three Melbourne families whose children were allegedly sexually abused by Brown at the Point Cook centre are preparing to take legal action against G8, with the first claim expected to be filed as early as next week.
At his dojo, Noble said the allegations against Brown had shaken him. “I’ve had sleepless nights. He trained with my son. To think someone you mentored and knew is accused of that. We’ve all been trying to think back.
“He was a bit socially awkward, even then he’d gravitate more to the younger kids a couple years below him, but there was nothing to suggest any of this.”
G8 did not answer detailed questions on whether it gave references or passed on information about investigations into Brown to other providers in the sector.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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