We am breaking that silence. Not to destroy, but to diagnose. To follow the example of a revolutionary who prioritized truth-telling over institutional reputation, who revealed what was hidden to heal what was broken. #EngineeredVulnerability #BreakingSilence #FaithAndJustice
We am breaking that silence. This is our revelation. If you’ve lived this hidden map, you are not alone. Your story is not a secret to be kept; it is a key. #EngineeredVulnerability #BreakingSilence #FaithAndJustice #LowSES #HiddenRules #Revelation
When things get bigger than 1-on-1, beyond one group vs another, it may actually be #institutional. Coming towards the end of its #nationredress scheme, Australia’s having more #whistleblowers identify issues ‘swept under the rug’. This is a needed change!
Going out to all of our readers/viewers, now that even the PMSA of the BBC school has knocked back my request to bring a group of peers (some of you) to my ‘apology’, now I’ll try flipping that idea on its head & ask for representatives from each of my (3) institutions to make their apologies together. Same sauce, different ingredients … 🙀🤷🏽♀️
Examples of flavoured sauces. (Used for indicative purposes only)
We’ve spent our lives trying to get our heads around what behaviours were practiced at these institutions, now we should have every right to have them expose their rot, in front of one another. While they were protective about having multiple victims alongside others (despite what NRS had offered), this could raise some tensions &/or pressure?!
DPR details, posted from NRS.
Hopefully this approach will ‘put each of them on the spot’!
Paedophiles have infiltrated Australia’s $22 billion childcare industry by exploiting lax regulation, piecemeal oversight and glaring staffing inadequacies, a major Four Corners investigation has uncovered.
The full scale of this crisis has been hidden — until now.
We have identified almost 150 childcare workers convicted, charged, or accused of sexual abuse and inappropriate conduct. Half of the 42 people convicted were sentenced in the past five years alone and another 14 are currently before the courts.
The public records we have pieced together show the rate of offending in childcare is increasing — exposing a system that has allowed predators to thrive.
With barely 15 per cent of reports of child sexual abuse leading to charges and only 2 per cent leading to a conviction, experts say the real number of predators who have worked in child care over the years is likely in the thousands.
Drawing on more than 200,000 pages of previously confidential documents, police tip-offs, court records and evidence from parents, educators, whistleblowers and experts, the investigation exposes a system so broken it has created a perfect storm for abuse.
“The psychology of these people is to seek out opportunity, and childcare centres represent an excellent opportunity for them,” said Drew Viney, the former head of AFP’s National Victim Identification Unit, who helped catch one of the country’s most prolific paedophiles, childcare worker Ashley Griffith.
“The safeguards aren’t there … there’s failures at multiple levels from what I’ve witnessed firsthand.”
“These monsters are thriving in these spaces because it’s so easy for them,” said the mother of a child who was repeatedly sexually abused by Griffith in NSW.
Our analysis shows that most of the abuse occurs in for-profit centres, where cost-cutting, high staff turnover, and routinely breached or gamed child-to-staff ratios leave supervision dangerously thin.
Staff burnout, low pay, and fast-tracked training courses are also gutting quality and oversight.
It is a trend that worries Michael Bourke, a global authority on child sex offenders. A forensic psychologist who has interviewed more than 1,200 offenders, he founded and led the US Marshal Behavioural Analysis Unit — one of the first teams to use behavioural science to hunt offenders.
“Predators are drawn to child care for the same reason that fishermen are drawn to the place where there’s the most fish,” Dr Bourke said.
“The predators are going to look for any prey-rich environment, any environment in which there’s children, and then there’s a decreased chance of being detected. So they’re going to be looking for places where there’s instant trust … and lack of supervision.”
Warning: This story includes details of sexual abuse
The true scale of failures
Some of those with cases before the court can be named, others remain hidden behind suppression orders.
Joshua Dale Brown is accused of assaulting eight children and producing child abuse material where he worked. Sydney educator David James allegedly filmed 10 children across six of the 60 services he worked at before he was arrested.
One of the 13 who cannot be named was arrested in July, accused of taking explicit pictures of 10 children over a three-year period. He worked at multiple childcare centres around Sydney for more than a decade, undetected. Police only became aware of him after he uploaded abuse images to a cloud server.
Scratch the surface and a sense of the true scale of the failures is revealed.
Four Corners has accessed the largest-ever database of childcare regulator files — more than 200,000 pages of documents previously kept from public view — containing alarming findings about the sector in New South Wales, Australia’s largest childcare market, and a stark reflection of what is happening nationally.
The files reveal widespread gaps in safety, with hundreds of centres breaching child safety laws.
There are more than 700 cases involving missing, expired or unverified Working With Children Checks, which is meant to be a fundamental safeguard to keep predators out of childcare. This means children are being cared for by people whose backgrounds were never properly vetted.
There are dozens of incidents of alleged inappropriate sexual touching and kissing by educators: biting a child on the back of the neck in a “hidey hole”; filming a child’s genitals; showing images of genitals to children; tickling children’s inner thighs; a child touching herself and saying “[an educator] told me to do my exercises today”.
The files, which cover the years 2021 to 2024, include hundreds of cases of poor supervision and breaches of staff ratios — a key line of defence in keeping children safe.
There are scores of centres where educators do not understand child protection or mandatory reporting obligations, and centres with chronic deficiencies in record keeping — which makes it hard to track educators as they move from centre to centre.
In most cases the regulator responded with a caution or warning letter to the centre to do better, even in repeat cases.
NSW Greens MP Abigail Boyd has been working with Four Corners to access these previously hidden files. She was horrified, albeit not surprised, by the extent of sexual abuse and the failure of the regulator.
“When you look through the documents and you see the same patterns in all of these places, and it is, it’s lack of staffing, it is a lack of regulatory response. It’s all these factors coming together that create all these gaps for these paedophiles to wriggle through,” Ms Boyd said.
“We’ve had this unregulated sector that has been infiltrated by these profit takers and it’s created all these holes for these bad people to worm their way through and do atrocious things.
“They look for scenarios like that. They look for sectors like this. This lack of regulation, this lax approach to allowing these providers to continue at all costs.”
‘We need to wake up’
Four Corners has spent months piecing together court documents and public records to build a nationwide database of almost 150 childcare workers convicted or accused of child sexual abuse or inappropriate conduct.
Some date back decades, but the vast majority offended in the past 10 years.
Some cases had slipped through barely noticed, like educator Matthew Shane Jones. He was found guilty in 2023 of repeatedly abusing a four-year-old girl at a Hobart childcare centre, including taking photos while she used the toilet and exposing himself to her in the bathroom. The child eventually told her mother: “Matt and I have a secret”. He is serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence.
Alexander Patrick Wilson is another educator who received scant media attention. After he was discovered forcing a two-year-old boy to give him oral sex at the Brisbane centre where he worked, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months behind bars in 2016. The then-20-year-old was also convicted of possessing child exploitation material.
Adelaide childcare worker and Families SA foster carer Shannon McCoole secretly ran one of the world’s largest online paedophile networks, known as The Love Zone. Arrested in June 2014, he later pleaded guilty to 18 offences, including persistent sexual exploitation of children, and is now serving a 32-year prison sentence. His group required members to upload videos showing children being abused — each child forced to hold a sign with the offender’s username, the date, and the words “The Love Zone”.
Others are charged, convicted and serve their entire prison sentence without ever being publicly named, due to court suppression orders and child protection laws.
One Queensland man is serving five years in prison for molesting three boys at his local childcare centre between 2014 and 2018 — crimes that shattered a small country town.
University of New South Wales Professor of criminology Michael Salter says childcare centres are not doing enough to detect predators.
“My real sense of alarm is that often we are only detecting those men through the online investigations into their images and videos. We are not detecting them on the ground in childcare centres through proactive safeguarding measures,” he said.
“I don’t think that the public has any idea how bad this situation is. I think this information’s really been quarantined from the public for a long time and we need to wake up.”
If you have a story to share about child care you can contact ABC Investigations here.
‘Don’t tell anyone’
For every case that surfaces, many more never do.
Every working day there are more than three reports of sexual or physical abuse of children in child care. But experts say most child abuse in early learning settings is never reported or recorded.
Even when cases are reported, few lead to charges or convictions.
“Many cases drop out before they reach the stage where you would say it’s in the official records. Eighty-four per cent of victims never disclose their sexual abuse in their entire life. So we think we’re capturing just a small amount,” said Dr Bourke, who has worked with the FBI, CIA and Australian police profiling predators.
For a paedophile to be jailed a child must recognise the abuse, be able to disclose it, disclose it, be believed and then have an adult file a report with police. Evidence must be gathered, charges laid, and prosecutors must take the case to trial and win — a chain that rarely holds together.
“It’s very difficult to make some of these cases and children sometimes don’t make the best witnesses … and the perpetrators count on that,” Dr Bourke said.
Four Corners spoke to dozens of parents across the country who say their children were abused in childcare. Their stories are among the vast number that never make it to court.
Two mothers told a Melbourne centre, months apart, that the same educator had sexually abused their children.
They separately made reports to the police but both cases went nowhere and the educator kept his job.
One of the mothers told Four Corners she was devastated that she put her child into the care of someone who abused her.
“We wrote to our local politicians, we wrote to the education department, the centre and pushed to get rid of this guy.”
She said the centre told her the educator was “quite popular with the parents” and gets “great reviews”. The police did not have enough to build a case.
“When my girl is older I want to be able to tell her I did everything I could. I hope that she understands,” she said.
In Brisbane, another mother said her daughter was sexually abused over a sustained period at a childcare centre. Nothing happened to the abuser.
“She went literally overnight from being a happy-go-lucky little kid to being just depressed and miserable,” the mother said.
“She started to come home with blood in her underpants. She started to say things to me like, ‘Mummy, would you lick me?’ Pointing between her legs. I didn’t understand where this was coming from.”
Her daughter’s third birthday was the clarifying moment when she realised she was being sexually abused.
“I had bought her Barbie dolls and she ripped off their clothes and she started to lick them between the legs,” she said, her voice cracking.
“From the age of three, she became malnourished. She couldn’t eat. She would replay what happened to her again and again.
“And then she thought I was the perpetrator and she would attack me. And this would happen for hours and it would happen every day for years. So I guess one of the messages is that kids are not resilient. People think they are. They become ill from these things and it has long-term repercussions and it steals their childhood.”
She went to the centre, which was run by women, and was brushed off. She said repeated visits to the police also went nowhere due to lack of evidence.
“The system doesn’t care about kids,” she said.
“I feel like I am pressing a giant red panic button and nobody cares.
“We need a wakeup call that this is happening in childcare, that you can’t just trust that childcare will look after your child. The child is behind a closed door and you have no idea what’s going on behind that closed door.”
Staffing and supervision
Drew Viney has seen this broken system at its worst.
Running the AFP’s elite victim identification team — that works with authorities worldwide to unmask predators, identify child victims used in abuse material, and rescue them from harm — Mr Viney helped catch Ashley Griffith.
Griffith was sentenced to life in prison in November 2024 after pleading guilty to raping and assaulting 65 children in Queensland childcare centres. He is set to face a trial for a series of alleged offences against 23 children in NSW.
Mr Viney went inside dozens of centres as he worked to track down paedophiles. It opened his eyes to the problems in the sector.
He said staff-to-child ratios were not what they should be, “especially given the amount of money that is provided to childcare centres”.
“The childcare centres would swear black and blue that they would never have the opportunity to do things like that,” he said.
“But the videos later showed that [Griffith] acted with complete impunity.
“He would set up a tripod and would record his ongoing abuse on multiple occasions. There were multiple videos of the kids just playing naked and running around. He had no concern that someone would come in and identify what he was doing.”
A recent survey of thousands of childcare workers by the United Workers Union revealed staggering levels of understaffing across the sector. Seventy-seven per cent of educators said their centres were understaffed at least weekly.
An insider at G8, Australia’s second largest childcare chain, leaked a series of WhatsApp messages between staff at centres in Western Australia, laying bare the daily chaos of chronic understaffing:
“[Centre name] are six team down tomorrow and need the following shifts for ratio and compliance… any qualification fine…”
“Great Beginnings [suburb] is down three team members tomorrow. We need a lunch cover…”
“Hey team, I know this is a big ask but we’re down four team today… if anyone can come in, please let me know.”
The insider said this is routine, with ratios often unmet, qualification rules ignored, and “general substandard care not adhered to under ratio requirements across the board”.
G8 Education said it has policies and procedures to ensure it complies with regulations around appropriate staffing levels.
“The safety, well-being, and development of the children in our care is our number one priority,” it said.
The NSW regulatory files included documents detailing supervision breaches, including hundreds of serious lapses — yet most ended with nothing more than a warning or “caution” letter that “no further action will be taken”.
We found just one fine: a $200 penalty issued in 2021 after a child scaled a fence and escaped. For the three other breaches that day, the centre received a simple caution.
Even repeated failures to meet the legally required staff-to-child ratios took years before any attempt was made to shut a centre down.
Many of the staff ratio breaches were severe. In 2023 at a Penrith childcare centre, 25 children, of whom about half were aged under two, were being cared for by only two educators when state regulations required six educators.
Another indicator of inattentive or overstretched educators was how easy it was for children to go missing without centres noticing. In one case, a child escaped a regional centre and was found by a truck driver walking on a nearby national highway. Between January and June this year, 82 centres in Queensland received breaches for children absconding from services.
Former childcare centre manager turned childcare consultant Chey Carter blew the whistle on the industry in March. She said she turned down a contract valued at $1 million with childcare giant Affinity Education so she could speak out.
Affinity disputed this and said they were only at the early stages of talks and money was not discussed.
Ms Carter said staffing levels were often dangerously low at childcare centres.
“Wages are the highest expense when it comes to running a childcare business. So often operators will try to minimise those costs, and the best way to do that is to play with the ratios so that they can reduce the staffing costs. And that can look like leaving one educator alone with children,” she said.
Profits
Industry insider Katrina Broadbent said the childcare sector was in crisis, plagued by staff shortages, declining education standards and widespread confusion about child protection and mandatory reporting.
“When you put that financial dollar sign on the care of that child, that’s when you’re going to start having problems. And I think that’s where the for-profit providers are adding to this,” she said.
“There are for-profit providers that can operate very successful and high-quality services. But I think when you start to acquire too many services, that is when the quality can drop because the organisation just gets far too big to be able to have oversight over all of these services.”
Ms Broadbent, who spent almost 20 years in the sector auditing big childcare providers at consultancy giant PwC and later led a quality and compliance team at major provider Only About Children (OAC), said the current staff-to-child ratios were challenging.
“The bigger providers in particular are operating on very tight budgets and staffing is one way that they can cut costs while still adhering to the basics of regulations,” she warned.
“As long as they’re adhering to the basic staff ratios there’s no issue with that. But the issue does lie in that you can’t provide quality and safe care of children when you are running at that really base level of one educator to let’s say four or five babies. It’s just impossible.”
She said the casualisation of the childcare workforce was another threat to child safety, diluting accountability and creating gaps in supervision.
“The casual staff that tend to move between centres is problematic in the bigger companies in that you have these floating staff that aren’t necessarily managed by a particular person or manager, and so they have the ability to move between centres and potentially be committing these acts of abuse, but completely going unnoticed,” she said.
Parents and educators at OAC have told us about a series of incidents of inappropriate touching by educators in centres across the country, including an educator wearing glasses that can discreetly take pictures, another allegedly touching a child’s penis, kissing, tickling a child’s groin, and a child telling her parent her vagina was sore and saying, “I told [educator] to stop, I don’t like it”.
Ms Broadbent left OAC in April but was there when Quoc Phu Tong worked as a casual at four of its centres. Tong was jailed in March after pleading guilty to sexually touching a child. The 36-year-old was sentenced to two years in prison.
The childcare files reveal OAC ignored months of complaints from parents and educators about inappropriate kissing and touching by Tong. It took OAC until September last year, after more serious allegations emerged, to act.
“In that case, there were fundamental challenges and issues with staff knowledge and education of child protection and what their responsibility is as mandatory reporters, but then also how to respond to concerns from parents and from other educators that something is happening,” she said.
Only About Children said in a statement it apologises to families impacted by the incidents, which were “totally unacceptable” and failed to meet the company’s standards.
“We continuously learn and improve and have already implemented comprehensive reforms across OAC to minimise the risk of future occurrences,” the statement said.
“This includes significant investment in additional training and capability of our educators to prevent, identify and respond to child safety risks.
“Where our people fall short of our standards and fail to follow established procedures, we hold them to account.”
The NSW regulator said it imposed a strict set of conditions on the centre and it was closely monitoring its compliance with the law. It said OAC had 320 confirmed breaches across centres in NSW between January 2024 and September 30, 2025. It did not issue any infringement notices during that period.
“We see this time and time again, the idea that you could have a service that has identified child sexual abuse, who then doesn’t tell the regulator on time, and then the regulator really doesn’t respond in any significant way to that. It’s pretty telling,” Greens MP Abigail Boyd said.
‘It’s in our backyards’
Australia’s childcare system is in crisis.
There are thousands of passionate educators and there are good centres too but for families, navigating this sector is a minefield.
State and federal governments have promised reforms, ranging from CCTV trials, higher penalties and an overhaul of the Working With Children Check system to introduce mutual recognition of bans across states, real-time national monitoring of holders, and a consistent risk-assessment framework to close cross-border loopholes. The federal government has also committed to cutting funding to poor-performing centres, but experts say more needs to be done.
In NSW legislation was passed on October 23 including 30 reforms such as compulsory child protection training, a tripling of penalties in line with nationally agreed changes, more transparency including details of current investigations and extending the limitation period for offences to be prosecuted.
The NSW government said the reforms were nation-leading.
“We are at a historic moment where across all levels of government, there is a real sense of urgency that we have to get early childcare right. And there is a scrutiny on the sector at the moment where the public is just becoming aware that every week we are seeing these egregious child abuse cases,” Professor Salter warned.
“We have an opportunity now to get this right, but I am worried that the spotlight will move on.”
He said while children made up 20 per cent of the Australian population, they accounted for 58 per cent of recorded sexual assault victims.
“Half of everyone who’s charged with a sexual offence in Australia is charged with a sexual offence against a child. Children are massively over-represented in the sexual violence statistics, but they are not where our sexual violence prevention dollars are going,” he said
“This is a threat to children that we can mitigate. It’s a threat to children that we can tackle if we as adults are willing to step up to the plate.
“But too often our discomfort around child sexual abuse means that we look the other way. And that’s what offenders rely on.”
The Minister for Early Childhood Education Jess Walsh said the Albanese government had acted swiftly on child safety in early learning.
“We are working shoulder to shoulder with states and territories to increase oversight and hold providers to account through our complementary regulatory enforcement.” She did not respond to questions about calls to establish a national childcare commission.
The calls are getting louder for a national childcare commission, as recommended by the Productivity Commission, stronger information-sharing between various authorities and police, mandatory reporting with real accountability and urgent action on chronic staffing failures.
There are also calls for more scrutiny of the role of the for-profit operators — and to start a discussion on the pervasiveness of child abuse.
“These crimes thrive in naivety and they thrive in secrecy. These are crimes that occur in the darkness of ignorance,”
“People don’t like thinking about sex offenders. They don’t like thinking about our most vulnerable population being at risk. But in that ignorance and in that silence, in that refusal to step into this world and really see it for what it is, that allows these men to do what they do almost with impunity, it emboldens them.
“It’s not going to work if we ostrich and put our heads in the sand and just hope it’s not in our backyards. It is in our backyards.”
Watch Four Corners’ full investigation, Hunting Ground, tonight from 8:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Some of the most treacherous individuals engage in disturbing behavior that, because it is legal, often goes unreported. Beware the insidious designs of the charismatic social predator.
By Wendy L. Patrick, J.D., M.Div., Ph.D. published May 1, 2018 – last reviewed on July 2, 2018
Anthony, a senior member of an editorial team at a media company that covers extreme sports, appears to be a case study in modern-day chivalry. He is charismaticand confident, holding the door for female colleagues and instituting a checklist to ascertain that women are never asked to cover “excessively dangerous” events without their explicit consent (and many a precautionary measure, if they assent). He has a great reputation and a mile-long resume to match. He’s a good listener, often spending extended periods of time helping coworkers brainstorm story ideas. His rapt attention frequently causes them to overshare—disclosing not only what is on their minds, but also in their hearts. Unfortunately for them, Anthony is not only a good listener, he is also a good manipulator.
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Exploiting the vulnerability of his colleagues is easy, once he has identified the cracks in each person’s armor. Tom, who was long considered the underachiever in his family, is empowered by Anthony’s consistent praise of his intellect—which Anthony couples with requests to create pitches that he then claims are his own. Maria, recently dumped by her boyfriend, maintains her sense of desirability through Anthony’s compliments on her appearance—which he couples with requests for her to help him finish late work in order to make deadlines.
Anthony’s manipulation flies under the radar for months. When a staff writer finally complains that he stole her material for a story on high-tech secrets used by Olympic athletes—information that she shared with him in confidence—her allegations fall on deaf ears. Reluctant to lose a source of positive attention and affirmation, colleagues and higher-ups take Anthony’s side—even those who recognize his manipulation.
Like other social predators, Anthony charms his way through personal and professional settings, using flattery and positive attention to win over those who will help him get ahead. These predators do not violate the law; they violate loyalty. They exploit their victims financially, reputationally, emotionally, and sometimes sexually, carefully covering their tracks to avoid any “official” wrongdoing. They seduce and discard a broad spectrum of trusting individuals.
Thanks to the #MeToo movement, the curtain has been pulled back on inappropriate and predatory behavior in all walks of life; there is greater awareness of these realities than ever before.
Now is the time to uncover those who engage in what is known in legal parlance as “uncharged bad acts” or “uncharged misconduct.” It can be hard to articulate just what infractions such people commit, given that there is no legal violation on the books. The ability to go undetected and unlabeled is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of predatory behavior. By contrast, individuals who are outwardly abusive, intolerant, or condescending are easily identifiable—and thus somewhat avoidable.
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Social (and sexual) manipulators have had years of practice hiding their darker traits. Many such people share another dangerous feature: They are smart enough to pull off the disguise. I will use the term “social predator” here to refer to these most stealthy offenders, although the categories of offense can blur. Social predators can certainly engage in sexual misconduct; on the other hand, they may do nothing whatsoever that meets the legal standard for offense. The commonality is that they prey on victims’ emotions or resources, either for their own gain or simply because they enjoy doing so.
Many social predators have psychopathictraits, yet if formally evaluated they might fall short of an actual diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. They may lack the ability to perceive or care how their behavior affects others, leading them to break promises, reveal private information, and take credit for others’ accomplishments. They get away with it by ingratiating themselves in an often drawn-out dance with victims that targets their ego and unique vulnerabilities.
Photo by Reinhard Hunger
The Grooming Process
Grooming involves desensitizing a victim to inappropriate social or sexual advances through progressive boundary-probing, while at the same time developing a foundation of trust. It is a recipe for a power imbalance. The primary purpose of grooming is to normalize inappropriate behavior. Whether pursuing sex, money, power, or just the thrill of inflicting emotional harm, predators use victims to benefit themselves.
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Sexual predators groom a child by providing the affection and attention the child covets. Social predators groom their boss by providing the admiration and respect he or she craves. In both cases, although pursuing drastically different goals, predators manipulate through focused flattery.
“Wow, Ms. Patrick, you really destroyed that witness. You are such a great advocate. I sure hope you go easy on me.” Who do you suppose such a compliment came from? It was, in fact, a defendant in a case that I litigated. I have prosecuted defendants who spent the entire trial complimenting me on my quick thinking and trial advocacy skills, despite their attorney’s repeated admonitions not to talk to me.
The objective? Obtaining a reduction or dismissal of charges, of course—a request they include with the compliments. Everyone has areas in which they are uniquely susceptible to praise, affirmation, or validation. Because some people become suspicious when showered with obvious flattery, predators often target more subtle and insidious areas of need or weakness. A manipulative boss may at first seem no different from a superattentive one. Both might tailor an employee’s work schedule to allow her to attend to personal needs. But the manipulative boss’s compassion comes with a price. Whether the motive is sexual or financial, he or she expects repayment. And, considering how the victims’ personal, private needs have been accommodated, they are likely to oblige.
Social predators won’t just focus on a person’s needs but will often confide how much his or her emotions personally resonate with them, using what researchers Paul Babiak and Robert Hare refer to as a psychopathic fiction to cultivate false similarity. Consummate chameleons, social predators will profess the exact same emotions as their prey, leaving victims feeling both grateful and relieved to have finally met someone who knows how they feel. Never mind the details (which are often fuzzy due to flaws of fabrication), it is heartening for them to realize that someone can relate.
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Victims on Trial: The Credibility Contest
Amy loves spending time with Jack, a man she met at the local library. He approached her as she was browsing the Victorian romance novels, admitting (after much hemming and hawing) a similar penchant for historical love stories. Normally reserved and private, Amy is thrilled to have met a man with a taste for this type of literature and with whom she feels comfortable sharing her feelings. Jack asks about her childhood and her goals for the future and seems genuinely interested in her responses. Believing that they have established a relationship of trust over several dates, Amy willingly reveals her fantasies . . . and her sexual past.
When they’ve known each other for two months, Jack shares that he has a sick mother living abroad whom he needs to bring stateside for treatment, and asks to borrow money to help with the medical transport. Flattered that he would turn to her for assistance, and grateful for his companionship, Amy writes a check. Although she is reluctant to admit it, her generosity is fueled in part by wanting to keep Jack on her good side, given the amount of private information he now knows about her.
The fact is that Jack’s questions were never designed to acquire understanding, but ammunition. If he seeks to further exploit Amy sexually, financially, or even reputationally, she will be unwilling to fight back, lest her personal revelations be exposed.
Having prosecuted sex crimes for more than two decades, I have heard scores of victims complain that they feel as if they are the ones on trial. Unfortunately, in a sense, they are. The credibility of an accuser is front and center in a sex crimes case, particularly if there are no witnesses. In a he-said-she-said scenario, the victim is always on the hot seat in the courtroom, subject to unrelenting cross-examination by the defense. Many questions derive from the information a victim has willingly offered the man who now stands accused of a crime against her.
Clever predators create an uneven playing field right out of the gate. During the grooming process, social predators use more than strategies of seduction. They also use strategies of reduction—casting aspersions on the victim’s credibility. They hunt and gather sensitive, embarrassing information about their victims early—to be filed away and retained for purposes of bullying or blackmail. If the victim dares to file a complaint, the character assault begins.
In such cases, a social predator publicly discloses private facts to discredit a victim. Labeling a woman a gossip, a disgruntled employee, an unreliable historian, a problem drinker, a slut, or worse, ensures that the perpetrator wins a credibility contest if a victim ever files a complaint or simply seeks to alert others to the predator’s true nature.
Photo by Reinhard Hunger
The Ruse of Reciprocal Disclosure
Brenda meets Tyler at the gym. He is attractive, attentive, and surprisingly transparent, given his position as a federal law enforcement officer. A few weeks into their dating relationship he’s already shared much of his life story, swearing Brenda to secrecy as he brands many disclosures “confidential.”
As a single mom running an online jewelry business from home, Brenda is enamored of Tyler’s glamorous job, especially given the steady diet of forensic crime drama she watches on TV. She is flattered to be counted worthy of his trust, and determined to prove that she feels the same way about him. To match his openness, she discloses information about her struggles, health concerns, and messy divorce. She even shares information about her children.
When Brenda and Tyler dine with some of his colleagues, she discovers in conversation that he has shared some of her stories about dealing with an unpleasant ex-husband. Apparently Tyler did not deem her private information to be confidential. What is she going to do about it? Nothing. Tyler has just demonstrated that he has no qualms about repeating her confidences. It would not be worth the exposure, shame, or humiliation that could ensue if Tyler were to retaliate by sharing more details.
Now, what to make of Tyler’s disclosures, which are essentially braggadocio about his professional feats, and all of which are confidential? Sharing information “in confidence” does not make it more credible. In fact, if it is supposedly confidential, the alacrity with which it is offered, early in a relationship, should flag it as less credible. This is particularly true when a new paramour holds a position of public prestige.
The “top secret” information a manipulative new love interest reveals is often false. It is G-rated fiction, and a social predator is virtually guaranteed to be the long-suffering protagonist. In contrast to the often sordid disclosures a victim is prompted to share, a predator’s private information might be sympathetic, but it definitely will not be salacious. Manipulators never tell scandalous or embarrassing stories that could be used against them.
Another red flag is the sharing of details that cannot be corroborated. Predators with professional status or community prestige are careful not to be exposed as liars. Relating stories about being duped by an ex-business partner “who shall remain nameless” ensures that no real personal or professional contact is impugned.
One of the few specific individuals about whom a predator may disclose information is his or her current romantic partner. He or she is “unstable.” The marriage is “coming to an end.” This is almost always a ploy to stoke emotional investment and romantic interest on the part of the victim. The predator wagers (usually correctly) that the victim will not directly confront the current partner. After all, predators size up levels of empathy and conscientiousness in choosing their targets.
The Masquerade Of Malevolence
Karen’s new mentor at the pharmaceutical company where she works is a traveling regional manager with a small car. He insists on taking her to his appointments at various regional hospitals to “show her the ropes.” When they are in the car together, he constantly reaches over her to access the glove compartment, checks her seatbelt, paws around for his coffee in the cupholder (and misses), or makes other superfluous physical moves in her direction. “Accidental” touchings happen frequently. When Karen finally tells her direct supervisor she does not want to accompany her mentor to any further meetings, her supervisor asks why. She is too embarrassed to catalog the minute but real chain of infractions, so she instead cites logistical problems, allowing his inappropriate behavior to go unreported.
Public officials, corporate managers, and other power players routinely serve as mentors and role models to interns, new hires, and local youth, with the goal of empowering and encouraging them to step up and fulfill their potential. Both social and sexual predators seek out such roles but with very different goals. They capitalize on the inherent power imbalance present in mentoring relationships—in pursuit not of victim empowerment but of exploitation. Should a victim complain to a third party, the power differential provides a ready-made credibility contrast, such that the perpetrator expects to “win” every time.
Predators know that they must always have plausible deniability, so they find legitimate ways to isolate a subordinate, having an aide stay late at the office to prepare for an event the next day, for example. Successful predators are smart enough not to invite anyone to their homes or hotel rooms; they strategically arrange other options. I have prosecuted sexual predators who ensured the office space they used to make moves on victims was out of the line of visibility from windows or cameras, so that their behavior could not be documented or corroborated.
Photo by Reinhard Hunger
Victims With Compromised Credibility
Sexual predators must be even more vigilant than social predators, as the consequences are far more severe if their behavior is exposed. Accordingly, they often select victims who already lack credibility, based on background, social status, criminal record, or other historical or situational factors.
Sexual predators masquerading as mentors often volunteer to work specifically with problem employees as part of a peer-support network, or with troubled youth in the community. In these situations, increased victim vulnerability coupled with decreased credibility provides a potent power imbalance, which also serves to decrease the likelihood that a victim will report any perpetrator who crosses the line.
I have prosecuted many cases where perpetrators specifically preyed on victims with damaged reputations. These cases included men raping prostitutes, assaults on prisoners, teachers molesting emotionally troubled adolescents, and coaches abusing players with documented behavioral problems. The victims’ social status inures bystanders (and jurors) to the weight and import of the crime.
Sadly, countless cases are never reported. Many victims of sexual harassment or abuse who suffer from compromised credibility remain submissive and silent. They fear the perpetrator will expose their own disreputable past or emotional problems and are afraid they would never be believed over an individual who holds relative power.
Idealize, Devalue, Discard in the #MeToo Era
In a world caught up in so-called social climate change, the behavior of men in the workplace is under a microscope. Men who in an earlier era might have committed overt misconduct will be more inclined to do what some predators have always done—to simply toy with a victim’s emotions. Victims are left feeling violated and humiliated—but unsure whether they have even been victimized. Jeffrey and Susan are website designers. Although they work for the same large online company, their interaction has been limited to the exchange of pleasantries. One day, Jeffrey approaches Susan in the staff lounge, where she always takes her 3:00 P.M. break, to compliment her on a memo she shared in an internal forum. Susan is extremely flattered, because Jeffrey is the only colleague who has acknowledged her efforts, much less complimented her on her work. Susan notices that Jeffrey is as attractive as he is attentive. This positive contact leads to additional conversations, which begin to occur at 3:00 P.M. almost daily.
Encouraged by Jeffrey’s apparent fascination, Susan opens up to him about her life. She shares personal information, goals, dreams . . . and photographs. Because she has developed a crush on Jeffrey, when he asks if she has photos of a recent vacation, she happily complies. When he stipulates that he’d like to see her in a swimsuit, she sends a few bikini-clad selfies. After his enthusiastic response, she decides to share a few more, which she describes as “me in my PJs.” She is wearing only lingerie.
One day, Jeffrey fails to show up at 3:00. He never comes again. Susan is confused and distraught. She immediately checks the internal forum to ascertain that his username still exists and even takes a trip to the adjacent building on campus to ensure that he is still at the company—only to see him at his desk, working away. Her emails and text messages to him go unanswered.
After a week she returns to his building to ask, in person, if anything is wrong. He politely smiles and explains that he is busy. Susan is devastated, and the two never speak again.
Yes, it is possible that this is simply a romance that never got off the ground. If Jeffrey is a predator, however, he is practicing a time-honored MO of deliberately luring Susan into oversharing so as to obtain photos, often just to humiliate and destabilize her. Predators engage in this type of behavior simply because they can. In fact, Jeffrey will take pleasure in gaslightingSusan by denying that he was ever interested in her. And given their tech-savvy positions, Susan worries every day what Jeffrey will do with those compromising photographs.
The worst aspects of human nature do not change merely because a societal spotlight finally shines on them. But public awareness of subtle predatory tactics can drastically reduce the likelihood that men and women will fall prey in any arena.
How to Fly Under the Radar: The Predator’s Toolkit
Selective Attention Social predators express unique nonsexual interest in potential victims, a tactic designed to test receptivity and create vulnerability, without using any inappropriate behavior or language. Such behavior comes after the predator has gained the victim’s trust.
Too Much Information Predators overshare to prompt reciprocity, making victims feel obligated to disclose their own private, sensitive information, which can then be used for blackmail.
Strategic Privacy Predators arrange office furniture to create a zone of privacy away from windows or surveillance cameras. Beware of areas that are obviously designed to be out of the line of sight.
Creating a Captive Audience A moving vehicle is the perfect trap for a predator seeking to corner a victim alone. The small space inside a car is where “accidental” touchings occur, yet such close quarters allow the perpetrator the benefit of the doubt.
Red Flags After 5 p.m. Social predators in supervisory positions impose obligations on victims, requiring them to attend after-work “team-building” events where alcohol flows and cell phone cameras capture moments of weakness. Such outings are designed to compromise victims’ physical state, judgment, and ultimately, reputation.
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As an update for our various viewers (online & eMail), our stats averaged out for the past week have resulted as follows. As shown by the ‘Last 7 Days’ graph, with the unusual rise of Wed (8.10.25), views have resulted in the following: (see graph). Bullying, Narcissism & Headmasters letter were selected Links. A rise in the viewing of Nick Loyd’s trial, Kim Buchanan’s Sentencing, About RCbbc, ‘scapegoat + golden child’ & Christian Myth articles.
C-PTSD recovery’s success is deeply personal, hinging on individual definitions and therapeutic outcomes.
Effective trauma-focused therapies are crucial in significantly reducing C-PTSD symptoms.
The recovery process encompasses stages of stabilization, trauma processing, and life integration.
Personal agency and collaboration with therapists are key in defining and observing recovery milestones.
In part one of this two-part essay on C-PTSDrecovery, I established that the healing journey from C-PTSD is more like an arduous long-haul trek through Mordor than an easy stroll. Because of this, people often wonder whether it is even possible to fully recover from C-PTSD. In other words, does the long “hike” even end?
The answer to that question is highly subjective. Recovering from C-PTSD takes time. Even with extensive treatment over time, some individuals may continue to face lifelong challenges due to the complex nature of the diagnosis, necessitating ongoing symptom management. Conversely, for others on C-PTSD healing journeys, studies indicate that long-term trauma-focused therapies can significantly reduce symptoms.
So, if you’re someone with C-PTSD, is it possible to ever fully recover? Whether this will be the case for you, I can’t answer. No one can ethically answer that for you without intimate knowledge of you clinically. It’s highly subjective what “done” and “the end” will look like for you.
Some of us may feel like the “proverbial hike” is accomplished when we’re able to live functional, responsible, full adult lives without the symptoms ruling us (but still living with occasional triggers from time to time). Still others may feel like the journey has “ended” when a decade of memories are reclaimed and there’s an ability to get out of bed each day despite the lack of leading as full a life as we would like.
What and how we define “fully recovered” will be different for all of us; it depends on how you define recovery for yourself, what’s possible within the scope of your symptoms, and what work you do to alleviate them.
How Can Someone Start to Heal from C-PTSD?
Professionally, I’ve found that the complexity of the disorder naturally leads to a need for a comprehensive treatment approach, and as a trauma therapist, I hinge my work with clients on the three-phase framework of traumatology (pioneered by psychologist Pierre Janet) followed by an integrative treatment plan.
In other words, the work happens in stages, and it happens with a wide range of tools. The three stages of C-PTSD recovery according to the three-phase framework of traumatology are:
Stabilization: At the outset, in my clinical work, the therapeutic focus is on establishing safety and coping mechanisms. Clients learn to ground themselves in the present, utilizing grounding techniques such as mindfulness practices and sensory exercises.
Processing trauma memories: This stage entails confronting and integrating the fragmented aspects of the self that trauma has shattered. Therapeutic modalities, such as EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) are employed to process these memories.
Rehabilitation and integration: The final phase concentrates on rebuilding one’s life holistically. It involves not only addressing the psychological wounds but also developing healthy relationships, establishing vocational or educational goals, and solidifying the sense of self that has emerged from the crucible of trauma.
Across these phases (which are not always fully linear), trauma therapists will often rely on an integrative treatment plan that includes:
Psychotherapy: Considered the foundation of trauma intervention, psychotherapy crucially assists in customizing evidence-supported therapeutic strategies to address the unique needs and experiences of each individual.
Medication: Though not always the central mode of intervention, medication is often dovetailed with psychotherapy to manage symptoms like anxiety and insomnia that might hinder therapeutic progress.
Lifestyle adjustments: Adopting healthy lifestyle practices such as regular exercise, nutritional balance, reducing stress, making necessary structural life changes, and nurturing meaningful social ties.
How Do I Know If I’m Making Progress in C-PTSD Recovery?
Think of progress signs in C-PTSD recovery as being like those paint blotches on trees or those stone piles that tell you that you’re still on the path, that you’re not going in circles, and that, indeed, you’ve made progress. Some of those varied progress signs might include:
Development of coping strategies and resilience: Individuals can cultivate tools to effectively navigate the complexities of their inner world and the intensity of their feelings.
Reduction in symptom severity: As individuals progress, the intensity and frequency of emotional struggles and unhelpful behaviors decrease both in frequency and intensity.
Self-esteem restoration: Through therapy, individuals with C-PTSD often regain a sense of self-worth that trauma had taken from them.
Whatever and however your own biopsychosocial progress markers will look like, it’s important that you and your trauma therapist take the time to define what progress markers will look like for you on your proverbial hike so that you can both feel less overwhelmed by the seemingly unending nature of the recovery journey and also see concrete evidence of your progress.
How Long Does It Take to Recover from C-PTSD?
Hopefully, after reading this essay, you realize how complex and completely subjective the answer to this question is.
And I hope, too, that you see the agency and self-determination you have to work with your therapist to define what “the end of the hike” will look like for you and what progress markers you need and want to see on the way to ensure that you’re making progress.
It seems that I had built up my victim-survivour hopes too high, after listening to the 1st of my ‘Institutional Apologies’. Although I was thankfully surrounded by both my Counsellor & my Support Worker, it was another thing actually hearing pages of pre-written (meditated?) text spoken particularly for me! Yes I had attended multitudes of preparation classes, assistance in ‘cooling down’ & other victim-related events – yet this initial ‘Apology’ felt like I was back at the beginning (again). While it’s good that I now have something positive to shift my mind to, my thoughts go out to the many other victims-survivors who don’t.
While some of us still get triggered by replays of Scott Morrison’s ‘thoughts & prayers’ form of ‘apologies’, RCbbc will try to share other resources that actually work. My Counselling with Bravehearts will continue for 2025, with handover to another form of ‘progressing/moving on’, where I will remain socially connected to Bravehearts’ annual Fundraising Ball’s.
