Home Affairs let pedophile suspect work in Indonesia embassy for five months

Home Affairs allowed a suspected pedophile to keep working in Australia’s Indonesia embassy for at least five months with a security clearance before ordering him home to be arrested.

Stephen Mitchell entering the ACT Supreme Court on May 19, 2023. Picture: Sam Turner

Home Affairs allowed a suspected pedophile to keep working in Australia’s Indonesia embassy for at least five months with a security clearance before ordering him home to be arrested.

Public servant Stephen Mitchell was sentenced to 13 years’ jail in May over a string of child sex offences committed against six girls between 1994 and 2008, including charges of persistent abuse of a child and maintaining a sexual relationship with a child.

The Australian Federal Police first contacted Home Affairs about Mitchell on September 15, 2021, seeking help with its inquiries, and formally confirmed in early December 2021 that the former sports coach was under investigation.

Home Affairs let him keep working as a strategic intelligence analyst in the Jakarta embassy until mid-February 2022.

In a tabled answer to a question by Greens senator David Shoebridge, Home Affairs said it allowed Mitchell to remain in his job at the embassy at the request of investigators. “Notwithstanding Home Affairs’ obligations to provide a safe workplace for employees, ACT police requested Home Affairs preserve the integrity of the investigation by not informing Mr Mitchell of the investigation,” it said.

Home Affairs sponsored Mitchell’s checks for a “negative vetting one” level security clearance, which he obtained after commencing work there in February 2018 – more than a decade after multiple sex offence complaints against him.

The department told Senator Shoebridge the government’s security vetting process required a national police check but it did not identify open investigations when charges were not yet laid.

The Senate earlier heard AFP investigators did not inform Indonesian police of the presence of a suspected sex offender in the country before he was returned home, despite being aware of his participation in social clubs there.

Senator Shoebridge told The Australian: “It’s hard to comprehend how for almost half a year a man accused of serious sexual offences against children was working with a high level security clearance in the embassy and no steps were taken to protect children he came in contact with.”

Mitchell’s role at the embassy did not require him to have unsupervised contact with children, and a review found no evidence of such contact.

Senator Shoebridge said this wasn’t an adequate reason to prevent Home Affairs from returning him to Australia earlier, and said Indonesian authorities should have been informed sooner to allow “all reasonable steps to protect the local community”.

“It ignored the nature of his offending, much of which occurred in social and recreational settings,” he said.

Mitchell pleaded guilty to giving false information to obtaining security clearances.

Home Affairs’ chief operating officer Justine Saunders said there was no information available to the department at the time to “suggest that the individual was the subject of any allegations”.

Mitchell, a former national rock climbing coach, groomed a number of his victims through the sport, and his work as an unsworn AFP officer at Canberra’s Police Citizens Youth Club.

He was sentenced by the ACT Supreme Court to 13 years and five months in jail with a non-parole period of nine years. He will be eligible for parole in May 2032.

Justice David Mossop said the diagnosed pedophile had used a “gross disparity of age and power” to prey on his victims, leaving long-lasting psychological scars including ”anxiety, a lack of trust, and perceived lack of self-worth”.

“Those impacts in turn affect their parents, partners and children,” Justice Mossop said.