One day, a man was delivering leaflets in mailboxes when I was out the front one day. I said” hello” and he responded, looking like he wanted to stop and talk, but I was busy and politely gave him the brush off as soon as I realised he wasn't 
wanting something important like directions or a drink of water. I didn't think much of it, but for some reason I went out of my way to take a really good look and commit his face and voice to memory, cause something seemed odd about him. I normally wouldn't do that and have no idea why I did. Anyway, later that day after the postie had been by, I got what he put in there out of the letterbox and tossed it in the junk mail pile and forgot about it.
The next day, I don't know what it was, but something drew me to finding it and checking it out. It looked like a political party pamphlet, with advertising for various women’s and children’s services on the back. I didn't think much of it and put it back. An hour later I went back to it a bit more carefully. I'd never heard of such a political party. All the women’s and children’s services had similar contact details and names and all linked back to the political party’s contact details in one way or another. I’d never heard of any of them in my neighbourhood either. One was a child care facility and it had a registered child care number (the one you use when claiming for child care benefit) so it looked totally legit. I rang up Centrelink and checked the number with them and sure enough, it was indeed a registered child care number, listed as exactly as given on the pamphlet. They said that if it was legit I shouldn’t be concerned about having my child placed there. I put it back in the junk mail pile again.
A few hours later something about it was still bugging me. I looked at it all again, this time much more closely. There was a modelling agency for young women and girls – not unusual. A hair dressing service for women and girls – not unusual. A massage service for young women – not unusual. And the child care service, only for girls aged 6 to 12 – that was unusual. Adding them all together made it more suspicious, as they all had one of two phone numbers, one being a landline the other a mobile number. Their postal address was all the same as the political party. And I still hadn’t heard of the political party. I paid more attention to that. It was the usual thing, an introduction, a list of policies – one of which was getting RAGE off the air on ABC on the late weekend nights, which I thought a little odd for a political party to bother with, but then again I’ve seen stranger ones – and an invitation to join the party with explanation that it was a new party and they needed members to register properly and stand for the next election – well that explains why I hadn’t heard of them! Okay, fine, but it was still all wrong to me somehow, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Of course, my curiosity being what it is, I had to find out!
I phoned the landline number and enquired about the modelling agency. I was working as a life art model at the time, I’d worked in that industry for 10 years by this stage, and it was my most familiar and knowledgeable topic of the ones listed. It was the same man’s voice as was delivering the pamphlets that answered. He explained that the agency was for models of all kinds and all sizes, particularly for advertising and getting away from the concept that all models have to be a size 8 and 6 foot tall. I played the single parent looking to make a bit of extra money card, and he offered to meet me for coffee to discuss it further. The invite for coffee I found rather unusual way to apply for an audition or job, so I played his game and took the bait and arranged to meet him for coffee at a quiet local cafe.
He explained the modelling agency to me again. He explained that a lot of the work is done by his wife, and he’s supporting her in her endeavours to widen services for women in the local area; and the child care, hairdressing and modelling were her pet projects, and the political party was his pet project. Okay, that made some sense of what I’d been looking at. However, when I started asking questions about his wife, he started to struggle for answers, and when I asked in depth questions about the modelling agency, he started falling over himself to answer my questions. He suddenly started asking me questions about the industry as soon as he discovered I knew more about it. That seemed a little odd for someone who was supposed to be representing that business. I ended up concluding that he knew nothing about it at all really. When he really bit the bullet with me was when he started suggesting, and then pushing, the idea of taking some photographs of me. Of course, I refused. I kept being polite. Then he started getting really pushy, and even had the gall to ask me to show him my breasts! OMG! I don’t know how I did it, I guess my evil cunning side had taken over at this point, but I kept it cool and just politely declined and continued the conversation. I turned attention to the political party and got him talking about that.
He prattled on happily about it for a little bit, and we talked about the policy with the RAGE on TV thing. As it turned out, he wanted it off the air because he simply didn’t like it. For the sake of debate I politely debated against his policy, using the idea that there are far more important things that need attention. This encouraged him to ask me what sort of things I thought needed changing in society. Using this as my cue to lay my bait, I told him that I thought the penalties for sex offenders, especially child sex offenders, was far too lenient. I had him exactly where I wanted him. He took my bait, hook, line and sinker!
He started getting slightly nervous, I could tell by his body language. He started giving debate against everything I said. He could not find any grounds to support his debates that I could not counteract. It became very obvious very quickly that he was against harsher penalties for sexual offences against children, and his opinion on the age of consent alone was enough to throw him in jail in my opinion! He seemed to have a strange notion that a 10 year old girl knew exactly what she was doing! OMG! I politely wound the conversation over to the hairdressing business and then politely made my leave, using the time as the excuse.
I went home and as soon as I walked in the door I phoned Centrelink about the registered child care number again, and gave them the information on the pamphlet, the man that delivered it, and the conversation that I had with him. They transferred me through to another department, who gave me a different number to call, who transferred me again, who transferred me again, who gave me another number to call… After doing the rounds of many government departments and related child service organisations, and explaining my story a dozen different times, it was found that he had indeed registered his child care facility fraudulently and his registration was cancelled and an investigation was started.
That was one problem solved. Now if anyone else rang up to check, they would be informed that number didn’t exist and hopefully the caller would realise that meant something was wrong with the advertisement. Following the instructions of the people I’d been on the phone to for a few hours, I then called the local police station and told them my story. They asked me to go into the station and file a report. I did so, and as soon as I showed the pamphlet, the detective instantly recognised exactly who I was talking about. He was well known to police and was on their watch program of child sex offenders, and they wanted me to let my neighbours know if they had also received the pamphlet to take it in to the police station and that no one was to approach him lest they hamper the investigations.
I went home again and didn’t just talk to my immediate neighbours, I went one step further. This man had delivered all those pamphlets to every letterbox in the neighourbood. I had to counteract that. I didn’t have time to knock on every door, but it was a friendly community where neighbours talked, and so I wrote a letter describing the pamphlet, explaining it was fraudulent, that the person behind it was under police watch, and not to use these services or approach the man, instead if anyone had received this pamphlet to also contact the police. I did not give a description of him or any of his contact details. I then went and delivered it to every child care centre, kindergarten, school, community centre, church, and medical centre in the area. Some posted it in their windows and on their noticeboards, some passed on the news to their clients by word of mouth, and the schools and child care centres notified the parents of the children that went there. News in a community like that travels fast. Within days the police had enough of those pamphlets, and enough other evidence had been collected, to convict him of a variety of crimes, including fraud.
Repeating child sex offenders can sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to gain access to their victims. Some are indeed very clever about it. But no matter how clever they may be, we don’t need to wait until they actually commit a crime and hurt a child before we can do something about it. If we find someone unqualified and suspicious in attitude is trying to gain such access to children, we can usually find a way to put a big dent in their plans without creating conflict and violence and false accusations. Whatever their plan, there is a right and legal way to unravel it. Contacting the police should be a good starting point. They may seem to do nothing about it, but they will quietly watch the person and see if they can find any other evidence against them – you just might not see it happening.
Child sexual abuse is hard to get a conviction for as it is. We don’t need to wait until it’s too late. If we, as a community, can keep an eye out for things that are unusual, the things that don’t add up right and make little sense; and we report it as soon as we know something is wrong and worth reporting, we might not be able to stop every crime, but we can prevent many.
(June 23rd) (
