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Every time Anna drops her two-year-old at daycare and her child cries as she leaves, she feels a pang.
Anna’s concerns go beyond the normal wrench most parents feel when leaving a distressed child at care or school.
Her child previously attended a daycare centre where an educator worked who has since been convicted of a sexual offence against a child in his care.
“Every single time I leave my child somewhere now and they cry for me because we’re separating, I’m questioning, ‘are they telling me that they’re uncomfortable, that something’s going on?’” says Anna, who asked that her surname not be used.
Worse still, Anna replays moments when she left her child crying at the old centre – where the man worked – and wonders.
“I feel that I absolutely failed as a parent,” she says.
In late January, Quoc Phu Tong, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of intentionally sexually touching a child under 10 years old and one count of common assault, for offences against a boy at the Seaforth campus of the childhood franchise Only About Children (OAC). He is due to be sentenced on 20 March.
According to court documents, in September last year, a boy woke up distressed from his nap and walked to the outside area of the centre. Tong approached the boy and started tickling his groin on top of his clothing with his fingers and rubbing the child’s bottom with both hands.
Police claim the incident, which was described in the police fact sheet as “serious child abuse”, was witnessed by at least two other educators, one of whom told Tong to keep his hands up and away from the child’s groin, but said Tong continued the touching.
According to the fact sheet, which outlines the police allegations and witnesses’ statements, the educator then said to Tong: “‘Stop what you are doing, put your hands up, keep your hands up, it is not OK to touch his penis or his bottom, keep your hands up.’ The accused had no response, smiled and walked away.”
Tong was arrested more than a month later and pleaded guilty to the offences at the end of January.
Questions over reporting timeline
Only About Children (OAC) is one of the largest providers of childcare in Australia, providing care to more than 8,000 families across more than 80 centres around the country.
Guardian Australia can reveal seven days elapsed after the educator who witnessed the incident says she told OAC management about it, before OAC reported Tong to the education department and the police, and through other mandatory reporting processes.
According to her statement to police, one of the educators who witnessed the incident reported it to OAC management the following day. Guardian Australia has confirmed that police and the department of education, as well as other regulatory bodies, were informed by OAC seven days later. Tong was stood down by OAC the same day the reports to authorities were made.
OAC’s handling of the situation is under investigation by the NSW Department of Education, the regulator for early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, which investigates whenever it receives a report of an incident at a childcare centre.
“Educators are mandatory reporters and must make an immediate report if they are aware or suspect any serious incident, including sexual abuse of a child,” a department spokesperson said.
“This report must be made within 24 hours to the NSW ECEC Regulatory Authority and must also be reported to NSW police.
“Failure to report any serious incident that occurs in a service to the regulatory authority is taken seriously and thoroughly investigated … An immediate report must be made to police if there is a concern about child abuse.”
OAC did not reply to questions about what being “stood down” meant and whether Tong had worked across any OAC centre during the week between the incident occurring and when he was stood down. The company also did not reply to questions about the length of time it took to report the incident.
In a statement, the chief executive of OAC, Anna Learmonth, said: “We have acknowledged that we could have handled this incident better and apologise fully for the distress that this matter has caused families.
“OAC will continue to co-operate fully with relevant authorities as the standard mandatory investigations triggered by this incident are completed.
“Where people fail to adhere to our systems and processes, we will hold them to account.”
According to data obtained by the Guardian under freedom of infomation laws, the NSW ECEC regulatory authority has launched investigations into nearly 2,000 incidents alleging physical or sexual abuse of a child at childcare centres by an educator since 2020, including 414 in the first 10 months of 2024.
“When child safety has been found to be compromised, I have not hesitated to bar people from the sector, suspend or cancel services or providers, as well as prosecute for the most serious matters,” said Sharon Gudu, the NSW ECEC regulator.
‘We’ve got no way of knowing’
Tong had only been employed as an educator at OAC Seaforth for five months, but he had been a casual educator at various OAC campuses since 2022. OAC did not reply to questions about which centres Tong had worked at and whether any complaints had been raised about him at these centres.
One of those campuses was OAC Redfern, which Anna’s child attended. Tong worked there for at least 14 shifts and Anna says her child was present at daycare for most of those shifts, though she cannot face combing through the dates to work out the exact number.
Tong has not been charged with any other offences, and the Guardian is not suggesting he has harmed other children.
“This might sound dramatic, but it’s been earth-shattering,” says Anna of learning of Tong’s crime.
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“You’re sending your child, who can’t even communicate to you about their day, to somewhere where you trust the adults charged with their care.”
Alex White, an IT professional, also had his child enrolled at OAC Redfern for about a year before he and his wife, “Emma” (who asked that her real name not be used), learned of Tong’s offending through media reporting.
“This is somebody who interacted with our child and we’ve got no way of knowing what happened,” says White.
Most chilling for White was seeing photographs of Tong and his son together, published on the Storypark app, which is used by OAC to document the children’s day at their centre.
“We have photographs of our child with Tong, and I still open up those photographs and I look at [them],” he says. “Your blood runs cold, it gives you the chills.”
Rebuilding trust
Staff at OAC Seaforth told police they had raised concerns about Tong’s behaviour three times in the six weeks before the offence took place.
According to the police fact sheet, one educator made a complaint to the daycare centre saying she had observed him kissing children on the head, placing them on his lap and hugging them; she also later told police that he changed children’s nappies when he had been instructed not to do so. Another said she had seen Tong kissing children on the head, which seemed “strange, inappropriate and concerning”. A third said she had witnessed him kissing a child on the cheek.
The centre spoke to Tong about the reports from his colleagues, nearly a month after the first complaint was raised, and told him that it was inappropriate to kiss the children anywhere even if they were upset, according to the fact sheet.
Despite the warning, Tong went on to offend by touching the boy’s groin and bottom a week later.
White says he was shocked to learn that according to the court documents it had taken a week before the incident was reported to police, and there had been previous warnings about Tong before the incident that led to his arrest.
“I think all parents and all people are appalled at the idea that there might be offenders at daycares. I think that’s something that’s very hard to control, especially if there’s somebody who hasn’t had a background of offending before. I think the things we can control are what are the regulations or laws that daycares have to abide by in terms of mandatory reporting and what are their practices when they notice inappropriate behaviour by their educator.”
White and Emma raised their concerns about OAC’s communication with parents about the incident with management, including at a virtual meeting in late October with a senior executive from the company. The executive sent an email the following day, telling them:
“I wanted to confirm (as I didn’t yesterday) that as required, OAC reported this incident to both the Department of Education … and via the mandatory reporting process … [and] to the Office of the Children’s Guardian. On the same day as these reports, we also reported this to the local police station.”
White says he finds this email very upsetting now that he knows police say it was seven days from the time of being told of the offending until OAC reported to the police or other bodies.
“We are determined to learn the lessons from this situation and have put in place a number of initiatives to further reinforce and enhance our processes, training and systems,” Learmonth said in a statement to Guardian Australia.
Learmonth’s statement said these initiatives included commissioning an external reviews of policies, systems and processes; appointing a safeguarding expert to provide advice, support and training; refresher training for all campus directors on safeguarding and reporting; additional central oversight and performance management of casual employees; extra training for staff and a review of recruitment processes.
White, Emma and Anna kept their children out of daycare for several months before facing the reality that they would have to find a way to trust their children to the care of strangers again.
“It’s a really difficult decision for the two of us to send him back to daycare knowing how close he’s been to harm,” White says.
“We’ve got very little choice about it, we both need to work, we don’t have the option of one of us working and the other taking care of him. Unfortunately we just have to learn we don’t control the circumstances at daycare … and hope that if anything does happen, we’ll be able to support our son and support each other.”
