Mums would be warned about paedophiles under proposed law changes.
VICTORIA Police will launch an unprecedented crackdown on evil child sex offenders.
Tough new laws and a sweeping overhaul of police practices will see
convicted paedophiles come under intense scrutiny like never before.The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal the crackdown will include:
SINGLE mums being directly warned about starting relationships with dangerous sex offenders;
EVERY officer undergoing a course on the issue;
DIVISIONAL vans conducting daily routine checks on sex offenders’ homes;
SEX offenders forced to hand over detailed travel plans, and;
POLICE to be notified of change of residence within 24 hours.
Deputy Commissioner of specialist operations, Graham Ashton, said the laws addressed the balance between community safety and sex offenders’ liberties.
Single mums who unwittingly start relationships with dangerous convicted sex offenders will be warned by police that their children are at risk.
Police will be able to tell women in de facto relationships with paedophiles about their partner’s sickening past.
Mr Ashton said a small but significant number of women could now be notified.
“They’ve increased the powers so now, if we believe on reasonable grounds a child is at risk in a relationship, we can tell that person,” he said.
“If a registered sex offender enters into a de facto relationship, we can notify the other person.
“You definitely want to be able to tell someone if you find out that’s going on and we want to be able to tell them as soon as we can.
“Previously, we had to notify child protection and child protection could reach out to the family, but that was a cumbersome process. This streamlines it,” he said.
Mr Ashton, who has now resigned to take up a position as Deputy Commissioner with the Australian Federal Police, said the aim was for every officer to be concerned with tackling evil child sex offenders.
“We want every police officer to consider this area. It’s like road policing, you want every officer to be concerned with road policing and we want to include visits to sex offenders on our uniform patrol,” he said.
“Even just driving past the residence of a sex offender, you might see children’s toys on the front lawn ... some reason to stop.”
Registered sex offenders must also notify police of a change of address within 24 hours — before it was seven days. They must also tell Victoria Police of any travel plans, an oversight abused by low-life criminals to date.
“Travel is one thing we have been focusing a lot more on in the last 12 months,” Mr Ashton said. “The more you crack down in each jurisdiction, these people will network and travel overseas particularly, but also interstate, to engage in behaviours in those jurisdictions that we might not be aware of.
“We’ve increased our networking with the other jurisdictions but also, we’ve got increased provisions in this legislation that requires them to notify us of where they’ve been, to provide us with an itinerary, where they’ve travelled to and give us the full details of that travel, whereas before they didn’t have to.”
There are currently 5559 people on the Victorian sex offenders register and of those 1000 are regarded “high risk” or “moderate high risk”.
Mr Ashton said this number will continue to grow and it was “impossible to catch everyone that might be breaching it every time”, but revealed Victoria Police had developed a face-to-face training program and online modules that every officer will undertake to help pick up on signs of and tackle child sex abuse.
“There’s always going to be a risk of offending and we just have to try and have the best system we can to prevent it and obviously deal with it when it happens,” he said.
Mr Ashton ruled out making the sex offenders registry public, saying there is no evidence it would improve community safety.
“I would support such a concept but I just haven’t seen yet that evidence and I’ve certainly been looking for it,” he said.
“Most of the evidence (says) it doesn’t really make any difference to community safety, so until that occurs, I don’t think there’s a case for it.”
Mr Ashton said fighting evil child sex abusers was one of the toughest jobs in policing.
“We’ve got this job of trying to maintain a balance between them having their liberties and us trying to ensure the community is not at risk.”
heraldsun.com.au 17 Jan 2015
The policy is that the 'authorities' let loose the criminals and paedophiles into the general community in order to promote crime, yet apparently a 'romance warning' is going to save the prey from the predator.
Australia's 'criminal' laws are a joke at the expense of the community.
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