A Scouts Australia leader has been charged with the indecent assault of a 14-year-old girl at an Australian Scouts Jamboree held in NSW. Although Scouts Australia claimed that it has the ‘highest standards of child protection procedures’, the incident went unreported to Police for four days.

Background

Scouts Australia’s Jamboree is a 10-day camp that brings together more than 10,000 Scouts from across Australia and the world for on and off site activities.

Court documents allege that last Monday 4th January, a 14-year-old girl attending the camp was aggressively groped on the buttocks with both hands by a 63-year-old male leader. The NSW Police were not alerted to the incident until Friday 8th January.

The leader implicated in the report had a valid working with children check (WWCC) issued in Western Australia, his home state, and he has since been arrested and charged with aggravated indecent assault of a child under 16 while under authority under the NSW Crimes Act. The leader’s WWCC registration and Scouts Australia membership have been terminated.

While the NSW Police have stated that the 14-year-old victim was the one who reported the incident, Scouts Australia in a statement to the media said that ‘once the incident came to the attention of Scout authorities onsite at Jamboree, the NSW Police were notified immediately’. Both versions of events represent delays in reporting the incident.

The law: Mandatory Reporting

Assault is a criminal offence, and aggravated indecent assault under the NSW Crimes Act is an offence punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment. For this reason, the incident should have been reported by anyone who had knowledge of it. In addition, mandatory reporting laws apply to organisations such as the Scouts.

Section 27 of the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 (NSW) (the Act) provides that any person who, in the course of their professional work or other paid employment, delivers health care, welfare, education, children’s services, or residential services wholly or partly to children is a mandatory reporter.

Any person who holds a management position in such an organisation, with direct responsibility for, or direct supervision of, the provision of health care, welfare, education, children’s services or residential services for children are also mandatory reporters.

Although many of the Scouts’ management and leaders were from other States and Territories, the NSW laws of mandatory reporting applied while the 10-day camp was being held in NSW.

For this reason, leaders and organisers of the event had a legal obligation to report the incident to the Department of Family and Community Services if they suspected on reasonable grounds that a child (under the age of 16) was at risk of significant harm.

Section 23 of the Act states that a child is ‘at risk of significant harm’ if the child has been, or is at risk of being, physically or sexually abused or ill-treated. Sexual abuse, according the NSW Government’s ‘Keep them Safe’ guidelines includes contact behaviours such as touching or fondling a child in a sexual manner.

While it is not a crime to fail to report child abuse incidents in NSW, the failure to do so in accordance with the mandatory reporting laws can result in claims of negligence, breach of duty of care and the organisation’s liability.

When policies aren’t enough

In a statement released after the incident, Scouts Australia acknowledged that there was a delay in the incident being reported to NSW Police ‘due to a lack of understanding of Scout protocol and procedures by some leaders.’

This is an example of where extensive policies and a ‘zero tolerance’ approach can be meaningless if staff aren’t trained to recognise reportable behaviour and understand when and how to report it, in accordance with child protection laws.

While The Australian reports that there have been hundreds of comments on the 2016 Australian Scout Jamboree Facebook page about the incident, which applaud the group for its transparency despite the delay between the incident and arrest, it’s important to understand the potential danger to other children at the camp that was perpetuated by a delayed response. That is, a man who allegedly indecently assaulted a child was kept in a position of power over children at an overnight camp for four days following the alleged assault.

Child safe environments

Organisations such as Scouts Australia, and their staff, have varied child protection obligations when compared with non-government schools in NSW (for example non-government schools are required to report serious staff misconduct incidents to the NSW Ombudsman). However the mandatory reporting scheme applies to all entities that provide specific services to children.

In South Australia and Victoria, governments are taking proactive steps towards creating child safe environments within every child-related organisation, imposing the same child protection obligations that exist for schools to all organisations which provide child-related services across each State. For example, the Victorian Government has implemented seven child safe standards that impose duties and obligations on all organisations that are run by, or partly funded by, the Department of Health and Human Services. See our article on the Victorian Standards for more information.

A message for schools

An organisation such as Scouts Australia is likely to have well-developed policies and procedures relating to child protection.  However, as schools are aware, having a policy is one thing, implementing it effectively is a separate challenge.  Organisations providing child services need to go beyond mere “compliance” to consider how best to effectively implement policies in order to influence staff behaviour and create a child protection culture.