WHAT do you do when you discover a childcare worker accused of child molestation has been showing pornographic images to your son, who is six?
That he's been talking about you in smutty, derogatory terms and driving your son in a car to excursions without your permission?
A Sydney mother did what most parents would do: she withdrew her son immediately from the YMCA-run childcare centre and contacted its management, the police and the Department of Community Services.
In each case she got the brush-off, the mother — known as AT — told the royal commission.
The woman, from Sydney's south, described her terror that her son had also been molested after she learnt about the child abuse allegations from a friend two weeks after they were first made.
AT said her son, known as AJ at the hearing, said Lord told him rude jokes about "sex, penises and vaginas". He also told his mother Lord had visited him at school and falsely claimed he'd been to school with her, she "liked sex" and had large breasts and a large bottom.
Lord also said he would break AJ's arms and legs if he told anyone, she said in evidence.
Her son said Lord had shown him images of naked people on his laptop, including "a woman bending over and a man trying to kiss her bottom," AT said.
But when she rang the YMCA at Caringbah, her calls "could not get past the front desk" and staff "very aggressively" told her they could not give out information.
When she rang the joint investigative response team at Hurstville police station, which was handling the Lord matter, senior constable Leanne Kelly allegedly told AT her son would not be interviewed "unless he made a disclosure about actual sexual assault".
The first time she called DOCS and explained what her son had disclosed, "the DOCS worker laughed at me," AT said. The second time, the person on the end of the phone echoed what the policewoman had said.
She said when she told YMCA general manager children's services, Liam Whitley, she wanted to make a complaint about her son riding in the car with Lord, she was told that "if he was driving in a YMCA vehicle, you have got nothing to complain about".
The commission heard no pornographic images were found on Lord's laptop or phone after his arrest.
Son told of babysitter’s year-long abuse
IT IS every parent’s nightmare. She was a single mother working every Saturday to support herself and her son.
She paid Jonathan Lord $100 to babysit her son from 9am until 4pm and trusted him completely.
He’d been recommended by his mother and worked for the YMCA.
The sexual abuse started the first Saturday and continued every Saturday for more than a year until October 2011, the grief-stricken mother told the royal commission this week.
Her trust in the babysitter was such that when he and his mother called around in late 2011 to tell her of sexual abuse allegations against him and asked for a character reference, she immediately agreed and offered to recommend a lawyer.
But later that night when she asked her son, ‘‘Has Jonathan ever touched you on the willy?’’ he said: ‘‘He has done it every Saturday since the first time’’.
Then he put his ‘‘ruggie’’ over his head and didn’t want to talk about it any more, she said.
‘‘At that time, my whole world fell apart,’’ the mother known as AN to protect the identity of her child, known as AO said, her voice breaking with emotion. ‘‘I now see that Jonathan Lord groomed me as well as [my son].’’
Her son and other children appeared to love Lord, who ‘‘had a way with children,’’ she said.
Police interview ‘devastating’
THE excited eight-year-old thought he was going to McDonald’s for a treat. But his mother instead took him to Hurstville police station.
There he was taken from her and interviewed by police for two hours about being sexually abused by his babysitter, Jonathan Lord, while she sat outside crying.
She told the royal commission it was an ‘‘horrific experience’’ for which they were unprepared.
She’d taken seriously the advice of a detective not to talk to her son about his abuse because it could ‘‘interfere with the evidence’’.
Her son had told her Lord had abused him every Saturday for more than a year while she was at work.
So she was ‘‘devastated’’ when the abuser faced only one charge in relation to her son because in the interview her son had been able to specify only one date on which the abuse occurred, which she blamed on his lack of preparation for the interview.
