The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Commission) has released Case Study 12 which emphasises ‘best practice’ policies on grooming behaviour for schools. Although there are no registration guidelines or statutory requirements that compel schools to have policies to identify and report grooming behaviour, the Commission found that a lack of this best practice policy was unacceptable.

The case study is the final report from a public hearing held to examine the response of a Perth independent school to concerns raised by staff about the grooming behaviours of a male teacher towards a number of students in the prep school. The School’s systems, policies and procedures in relation to raising and responding to allegations between 1999 and 2014 were analysed and the Commission heard submissions from the Western Australian Department of Education Services (DES) and expert evidence on best practice for a child safe school environment.

The School’s inadequate policies

The Commission found that although compliant with the re-registration standards in WA during the period of the offences, the School’s policies were deficient against current standards of best practice. Based on these current standards the policies were found to be inadequate in three key areas:

• failing to create adequate child protection policies that included references, definitions and indicators of grooming behaviour;
• failing to establish adequate record keeping policies and a centralised database of concerns or complaints; and
• that there were no separate guidelines for reporting grooming behaviour as opposed to child sexual abuse.

A lack of training contributed to the School’s failures

The Commission heard evidence from teachers who had made reports about the alleged grooming behaviour revealing that they:

• had not received any training in reporting;
• had little knowledge of reporting procedures at the School; and
• felt trepidation in reporting for fear of being ostracised by parts of the School community.

The report found there to be a culture of non-reporting within the School at the time of the alleged offences, made stronger by the fact that mandatory reporting laws were not introduced in WA until 2009. The Commission was satisfied that the School failed to attach sufficient significance to the teacher’s reports and that a lack of training and adequate policies on identification and reporting at the School contributed to this failure.

The School had also failed, in the Commission’s opinion, to educate their students on what grooming behaviour is and how to report this kind of behaviour to a staff member. The School had only implemented generic ‘stranger danger’ training to students and not ‘friendly danger’ education or information about grooming behaviour in adults that the students may know. One victim gave a statement at the hearing that if he had received this training it would’ve been easier to report his abuse.

Expert evidence

Professor Stephen Smallbone is an expert in child safety in the school environment, a psychologist and a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University. In his statement at the hearing he explained that ‘best practice’ for a child safe school environment and identified the following requirements:

Schools should have:

• clear, written procedures on:
  • how to detect child abuse or grooming behaviours;
  • reporting procedures for child abuse or grooming behaviours; and
  • handling complaints of child sexual abuse and grooming behaviours;
• expertise training for staff on detecting and reporting child abuse and grooming; and
• an environment that is conducive to staff, parents and students reporting concerns.

Proposed changes for schools

The CEO of DES Richard Strickland submitted that the definition of ‘critical and emergency incidents’ should be improved to make clear the circumstances that pose a critical risk to the health, safety or wellbeing of a student include an allegation of sexual abuse against a student. Mr Strickland also suggested that WA Registration Standards should include the requirement that non-government schools’ code of conduct include a prohibition of grooming behaviour.

Over the next few months the DES will also consider:

• how to incorporate the concept of grooming behaviours into the WA Registration Standards;
• the development of a stand-alone child protection standard that covers grooming behaviours directly; and
• how to review the Standards to ensure that non-government schools meet contemporary standards of best practice.

The case study concluded with the Commission deciding that a school should be required to report to the Department where a staff member has received a formal warning for grooming behaviour and that a clearly enunciated and sufficiently detailed stand-alone child protection standard including grooming behaviours should be introduced for registration of non-government schools. The Commission is determined to work with government agencies across Australia to make this a reality.