Child safety challenge

November 26, 2013

Long-time children’s safety campaigner Richard Aston will make a submission to the Social Services Committee hearing on the Vulnerable Children’s Bill in Wellington this Thursday at 11.15am.

Richard Aston - CEO of Big Buddy, a well-known mentoring organization that has vetted over 600 volunteer male mentors for fatherless boys, says his submission to the committee will be challenging.

“We have the gold standard vetting procedure in New Zealand and it costs approx. $600 per vet,” he says. “We find the money to fund it because knowing we’ve done the best vetting job we possibly can allows me to sleep at night.”

“If Government is really committed to keeping sexual predators away from children, they have to be prepared to put their money where their mouths are. There is simply no point in dumbing down new vetting procedures and hoping for a different outcome.”

Richard Aston says the Christchurch earthquakes triggered an estimated $700 million dollar earthquake proofing exercise country-wide. “Why can’t we apply the same risk strategies to Kiwi children’s safety?” he asks.

He will also challenge CYFs ongoing assertion that sexual predators are incredibly clever and that vetting cannot be a predictor of future sexual behavior.

“This is simply wrong. Our vetting process is built on the premise of predicting the potential a person has to become a sexual predator. We have vetted well over 600 men as potential mentors to fatherless boys since our programme began in 1997. In that time we have had no accusations of abuse.”

More than 21,000 cases of child abuse were reported last year – a rise of 32% over five years. This resulted in some 4000 children being placed in supposedly safe CYF homes. More than 23 of these children were further abused in care.

This week it was revealed a computer glitch meant true levels of child abuse have been under-reported by as much as 8% since 2011.

www.bigbuddy.org.nz
www.facebook.com/BigbuddyNZ

ENDS

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