Predatory podcast: Australian kids need help after a parent is caught with child abuse material

Families are plunged into crisis after a parent is caught doing the unthinkable. Their child then utters the words you shouldn’t hear.

There is no specific service in Australia to help kids whose parents are caught with child sex abuse material despite a huge increase in offending.

Australia also lacks research into the best way to help the youngsters, with advocates calling for funding to support families during a time of huge trauma.

Sarah* is a mother-of-two whose life was shattered when her husband was charged with possession of child sex material.

“What these kids need is age appropriate, safe places to go, whether that’s helplines, whether there’s internet resources, whether it’s just that we equip our teachers to understand that when they’re told there are kids in class whose parents have been incarcerated for this kind of offence, that there might be some extra care that needs to be offered or different ways of dealing with it,” Sarah said.

Sarah, whose comments come a day after the launch of the fifth episode of News Corp’s Predatory podcast, said her children don’t know the full extent of their father’s offending – but many kids are aware of what their parent has been accused of and have questions existing help lines can’t answer.

“It’s so critical you can hand over something that says ‘hey these are the people who can help you right now’,” Sarah said.

There is no service that specifically helps Australian children whose parents are caught with child sex abuse material.

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Within a day of her husband’s arrest, he was charged and held in custody for months, leaving Sarah to navigate a frightening new reality — and help her children make sense of it.

“So that first night that he didn’t come home, I was able to say the police needed to ask them some questions. But I couldn’t say ‘Dad has committed a robbery, or punched someone’, that would be reasonable for children to hear. But you can’t say he’s been taken away for possession of child sexual abuse material because not only do I not have the vocabulary for this experience, my kids don’t,” she said.

PartnerSpeak founder Natalie Walker said one of the most difficult calls to get is from a young adult whose parent is a perpetrator.

She started PartnerSpeak with the goal of helping people whose loved ones are caught with child abuse material.

“They’ll ring up and say ‘Hey because my dad did something like this does that mean there’s going to be something wrong with me as well?’ and that breaks my heart,” Ms Walker said.

“At the moment PartnerSpeak is only equipped to support family members who are over 18 and so who do you go to for support if your dad’s been investigated or charged or your dad’s been incarcerated for harming children sexually online?

“That is something that we really need to respond to urgently, because at the moment we have thousands of children in that situation without research about what do they need and what kind of support should we be giving them. That’s a really urgent priority for these families at the moment”

* not her real name.

For more details about the Predatory podcast, go to predatory.com.au

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Originally published as Predatory podcast: Australian kids need help after a parent is caught with child abuse material