AUSTRALIA
The Australian
DAN BOX
From: The Australian
September 18, 2013
A SENIOR NSW government executive has said she deeply regrets the “inappropriate administrative error” in which a warning about the pedophile boss of an Aboriginal children’s service was sent confidentially to the man himself.
The Working With Children Check, which warned Steven Larkins posed a “medium risk”, was marked “private and confidential” and sent to Larkins himself as the general manager of the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Service.
Evidence before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse shows Larkins was later able to challenge this finding with false claims and fraudulent documents, and continue in a role where he had court-appointed parental responsibility for 19 Aboriginal children.
A report last year by the NSW Ombudsman, tendered to the commission, quotes the chief executive of the state’s Department of Community Services, Maree Walk, as saying her department “acknowledges this was an inappropriate administrative error”.
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