Officials pledge to toughen laws after 26-year-old childcare worker charged with abusing eight children under his care.
Australia has announced plans to tighten oversight of childcare facilities after a man in Melbourne was charged with dozens of sexual offences against children in his care.
The moves come after police in the southern state of Victoria announced on Tuesday that they had charged a 26-year-old childcare worker with more than 70 child sex offences, including rape.
The man, identified as Joshua Dale Brown, is accused of abusing eight victims, aged between five months and two years, at a childcare centre in Melbourne’s western suburbs.
Police have said they are also investigating evidence of abuse at a second childcare centre in the northwest of the city.
Authorities say the accused worked at 20 childcare facilities in total during an eight-year span that lasted until May.
Health authorities in Victoria have recommended that 1,200 children linked to facilities where the man worked be tested for infectious diseases as a precautionary measure.
On Wednesday, Australian Education Minister Jason Clare said he would press ahead with legislation to strip funding from childcare facilities that do not meet adequate safety standards and examine other potential measures, including strengthening background checks for those working with minors.
“Any Australian who heard the news from Victoria yesterday would be sickened by what they heard,” Clare said during a news conference in Sydney.
“And for every parent that is directly affected by this in Victoria, they would be frightened and they’d be angry.”
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said she would introduce a state register of childcare workers and ban personal devices at childcare centres from September.
Allan said her government would also commence an “urgent review” to examine options for improving safety in the sector, including potentially installing security cameras in childcare facilities.
“We will adopt every recommendation of the review and implement them as quickly as possible,” Allan said in a statement.
“Following yesterday, I know too many families are suffering unbearable pain and uncertainty. I cannot imagine what they are going through.”
The latest safety scare to engulf Australia’s childcare sector comes less than a year after a Queensland man pleaded guilty to sexually abusing dozens of girls at childcare centres in one of the worst paedophile cases in the country’s history.
Ashley Paul Griffith was sentenced to life in prison in November after admitting to more than 300 offences against 69 girls at daycare facilities in Brisbane and Italy.