Life Uncut - What Every Parent Needs to Know About Child Safety. Uncut with Kristi McVee

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

With everything that's come out recently about AI tools like Grok, online predators, and disturbing cases emerging from childcare centres, the question every parent is asking is ‘how do I actually keep my kids safe?’ It's a topic that feels bigger and more frightening by the day and one that parents constantly think about. Today we're sitting down with Kristi McVee. Kristi McVee is a former Detective Senior Constable and Specialist Child Interviewer. After 10+ years investigating child sexual abuse, Kristi shifted her focus to prevention to give families the tools, language and the confidence to protect kids. She’s the author of Operation KidSafe: A Detective’s Guide to Child Abuse Prevention, a speaker, educator and the founder of CAPE-AU, where she teaches parents and educators how to talk about consent, spotting red flags, online dangers and building trusting conversations with kids. Today’s conversation isn’t about scaremongering, it’s about learning real strategies and assessing both physical and online risks to keep our kids safe. We chat: The sobering statistics every parent needs to know - 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18 The biggest myths surrounding child sexual abuse, including why "it won't happen to my family" is dangerous thinking Why nearly 50% of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by other children and what "harmful sexualised behaviours" actually means When and how to start body safety conversations with your kids  Why using correct anatomical language could one day be critical to a legal case The grooming red flags hiding in plain sight and why grooming looks a lot like nurture The difference between in-person grooming and online grooming, and why kids often don't even recognise what's happened to them The sleepover question How to assess the safety of your child's daycare or early childhood education centre Red flags in your child's behaviour that could signal something is wrong The importance of connection: why predators use your lack of connection with your kids against you timestamps: 00:00 — Introducing Kristi McVee: former detective and specialist child interviewer 01:43 — Kristi's background: joining the police with a two-year-old and becoming a child abuse detective 04:11 — How do you come home to your own child after seeing this every day? 06:34 — The biggest myths about child sexual abuse  08:26 — What age are children most at risk, and who is most often the perpetrator? 10:11 — Harmful sexualised behaviours between children: what parents need to know 13:09 — When to start body safety conversations  16:22 — Should you use correct anatomy names with your kids?  17:30 — Why are convictions so rare?  20:21 — Red flags to watch for: grooming looks like nurture 22:03 — The "don't tell mum" problem and why secrets are a grooming tactic 23:22 — Online grooming vs in-person abuse: what's the difference? 25:16 — Has the social media age limit actually made a difference? 26:52 — What is Grok, why is it dangerous, and what can parents do? 28:41 — Should your kids go on sleepovers? A former detective's honest answer 31:23 — How do you explain to a six year old why they can't photograph their body? 36:00 — Behavioural red flags that could signal something is wrong 38:26 — The daycare safety crisis: how to assess risk and ask the right questions 41:23 — How often do offenders reoffend  42:26 — How Kristi keeps going when the weight of this work feels impossible 43:26 — The single most important thing parents can do You can find Kristi on Instagram  You can visit Kristi's website    You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Hosted by Britt Hockley & Laura Byrne Produced by Keeshia Pettit Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford & Lachy Pugsley Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. Now this is an episode that I have been looking forward to doing for a really long time and it sounds weird to say that I'm excited about it because I'm absolutely not excited. They're not the right words but there is a big question that I think every parent has and that is how do you keep your kids safe it's the one thing that I always say to my kids like my job is to keep you safe and in this forever changing landscape when you bring things into the mix like the internet like AI and even that of itself has changed so much just over the last couple of weeks the last couple of months it seems as though with everything that's come out about grok and

about the accessibility of online that landscape has changed so quickly and it feels very frightening for a lot of parents. This conversation we're having today is all around how you do keep your children safe and the conversations that you need to have with your kids in order to build the respect, the trust that you need for them to be able to come to you if there's ever a situation that makes them feel scared or makes them feel as though something is just not right. We have Christy McVie, who is a former detective, a senior constable and specialist child interviewer. After 10 plus years investigating child sex abuse, Christy shifted her focus to prevention to give families the tools, the language and the confidence to protect kids.

Now, I've been following her online for a very long time, but she's also the author of Operation KidSafe, a detective's guide to child abuse prevention, a speaker and educator and the founder of Cape Dash AU, where she teaches parents and educators how to talk about consent, spotting red flags, online dangers and building trusting conversations with kids. Christy, welcome to Life Uncut. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Christy, let's start by giving us a little bit of a background about your former life as a detective and how you found yourself in that industry. Yeah, so I actually joined the police when my daughter was just two years old. I don't know if you asked me why I joined the police when I had a toddler. No idea. I actually saw an ad in the paper and thought, well, I could do that. I don't know, maybe becoming a mother made me think I was superhuman. I don't know but well evidently you were I saw this ad and I thought I can do that and everyone

I'm only five foot one if you ever meet me in person I'm really short so everyone laughed at me and so that made me more determined and by the time I actually got trained and you know applied my daughter was two so I got into the police and my first impression was oh what have I done but then I found my feet and started in regional Western Australia so I'm in Western Australia and I put my hand up within the first year to become a specialist child interviewer to interview kids and so my daughter was three and I relate that to my child and how old she was because it was such a learning curve for me I didn't have the same experience or knowledge that I have now about child sexual abuse and abuse and so she was three and I was learning what most parents

probably are feeling right now and that fear and shock at that stage so yeah and then when she was about five I decided to become a detective I within four years I put my hand up to go and become a detective because I wanted to be on the front line of you know arresting and investigating child sexual abuse as well so my experience in the police was pretty full-on obviously I put myself right there in the front of child sexual abuse and I felt very driven to protect kids from the very get-go. In fact, my first experience with child sexual abuse in the police was within my first week of policing. I attended a job where a child had been sexually abused by an adult on a sleepover. So I went to the house to get the child and the family's information and to start

the investigation. And I think that might have just sort of sparked the interest in that part of it because I remember just looking at the parents, they were devastated. The little person was devastated as well. So, you know, they had frozen when it happened and didn't know what to do. And I just remember putting myself and my daughter in that situation, you know, like what would I do? You know, would my daughter know what to do? So, yeah. I mean, I don't want to steamroll ahead on this conversation at all, but something that I, when I saw it on your social media, I was like, I really, as a parent, I don't know how you managed to find whatever it was in you to be able to put yourself in that position. Because when you think about going to work every day and seeing the

most horrific side of humanity, and then coming home and having your own child who's at a very similar age to some of these children who would have been victims, how do you reconcile those two things? And how do you not bring your work home and then have that affect every aspect of your life yeah I don't know how I did it actually when I did the training to become a specialist on child interviewer and I started interviewing children yeah I was coming home and I was talking to three-year-olds or four-year-olds and I was coming home to a four-year-old so you know it made me hug her a lot more it made me realize that the only way that we can actually protect kids is by being aware being educated and doing prevention education like body safety which

is what I've focused on since leaving the police because although it's not a child's job to protect themselves from child sexual abuse they need to know what someone is doing in order to be able to tell someone so you know there's language and there's and we will get into that I'm sure but there is language and things that we can teach and that was the one thing that I learned very early on is that a child who has the knowledge has the connection with their parents and has that understanding that this is not appropriate this is not okay or this is not safe they speak up faster they speak up quicker and they seek help quicker it is interesting that um you went into this specific field after having children just off off the back of what laura just said i have

friends in the space that are were are detectives of child abuse and it was the opposite so they were in the space and then once they had kids they had to leave because that they they couldn't fathom what they were dealing with every day knowing that their their soul and their heart had changed in a way and thank god there are people out there like you doing doing the work let's just get straight into it what do you think are some of the biggest myths that people should know surrounding child sexual assault and abuse the biggest myths are that it's not going to happen to your family you know we know through statistics and through research that 28.5 percent of adult Australians have been sexually abused walking

around in Australia today. Nearly 30%. Yeah, nearly 30%, over one in four, or one in three. So the fact is is that a lot of adults, you know, have been sexually abused, yet we have this myth that it won't happen in our family, it's not going to happen to our children. One of the myths that I didn't realise people didn't understand

was that not every sex offender will abuse every child. so it's really dependent on conditions and the grooming in order to abuse a child right and so most people think oh well first of all it won't happen to my family well someone in your family has been sexually abused they just haven't spoken up yet because on average a victim survivor will it's about 24 years before they disclose 30 years for men 99 of men never tell anyone and you know just to get all the stats out there one in three girls and one in five boys will be sexually abused before they reach 18. I think the thing is, is that all of these things are really hard hitting and hard to hear, but when we know more, we can do more. And, you know, one of the other myths that

a lot of people don't realize is that, you know, nearly 50% of all child sexual abuse is by other children. So, you know, we used to, and our older generations used to say, it's just kids being kids or experimenting. No, we actually know that that does harm as well. So it's not everyone, but it can be anyone and we need to be mindful that you know our children our families require us to be aware about this this is no different to pool safety swimming you know seat belt safety road safety all of the things because in my experience when we have this knowledge and we put in the small things it's not like we have to be paranoid we don't have to be paranoid we just have to have our blinkers off and we need to be aware that it happens. What age is most at risk? Like what age

of children are the ones that are the target, I guess, targeted the most? Look, obviously girls are still the highest percentage of child sexual abuse victims. And generally there isn't an age specific, but you know, girls are more at risk from the age of about two, three years old. We see it and it depends on the type of or who is offending against them so if we're looking at adult offenders sometimes that can be any age group they it just depends on access so you know a child being sexually abused it comes down to access you know access trust and it means that you know abuse can happen whereas when it comes to child on child abuse we see children very young still be abused but it can vary in regards to boys and girls so girls tend to be abused around

that four five to nine year age group more often not always it can be any group yeah but the boys tend to in teenagehood you know other boys abusing boys when puberty happens and unfortunately access to pornography and all of the things so there's a lot of factors in play but it's not that you can walk around and go oh well now they're actually at risk you know they're at risk at whenever you know you said something that was really interesting to me because i do think it's changing i agree but i also see it even just from daycares and and different conversations i've had with parents like this conversation around like our kids are explorative like kids are going to do things that like but as long as the other child is of a similar age like they don't really

know necessarily what they're doing but i guess the conversation has to center around regardless of whether the intent is there if a child is uncomfortable or what's happened to them like how is that supposed to be managed in those situations I'm thinking for example you send your kid to daycare your kids come home and they've said this happened and objectively they've been touched or something by another classmate what would be the right actions I guess of a parent to be able to manage that situation and what should be the response of the child facility or the childcare daycare center that the child's at? The thing about, it's called harmful sexualized behaviors when children harm other children.

It's harmful because there is a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge, wisdom, and they don't understand what's happening to them sometimes. A lack of knowing that it's inappropriate, unsafe, et cetera. And if we go back to body safety, for instance, we teach kids that I have the right to say, no, my body is my body. We don't touch anyone else's private parts. the mouth is a private part as well and so we teach kids that but what happens in harmful sexualized behaviors is if there is a power imbalance between age groups it's an older child with a younger child then we can't say it's experimentation if both children didn't know what was happening and didn't agree to it there wasn't a shared knowledge in that this is

what we wanted to do then that is harmful as well if there's force or bullying or threats involved that's harmful but what happens in say child care centers is or early childhood education is that yeah kids do like they do find at three four five years old they do find each other's private parts interesting they do talk about fart jokes they do talk about you know all of these things but it's how we react as the adult we need to protectively interrupt and remind them that of our body safety rules which is we don't touch anyone else's private parts you know we don't look take photos or ask them to touch our private parts our private parts are our private parts and that's why that education is so important because we have the the framework and the boundaries and rules to come

fall back on every time something happens and you know kids will look at each other's privates they do want to go and show each other in the toilet but again if we're the adult then we're okay no guys you know this isn't this is against our body safety rules this is not what we do this is not him appropriate. So, you know, it's not bad. I'm not saying that kids, you know, wanting to see each other's privates or, you know, talking about each other's privates is bad. All it is, is that we know that if it's left unchecked and we don't do something about it, we don't protectively interrupt that behavior, then it can escalate into abuse. And I guess the context around that is important. Are they both of the same age and being curious and showing, saying, this is what

mine looks like. What does yours look like without actually knowing? Or is it something a little bit more sinister. At what age do you start having these conversations and putting boundaries and this body safety in place? And how do you go about using the right language when they are so little? Off the back of talking about language, is it important to use correct anatomy names or should we be giving them a softer name? Like I'm trying to think of what my parents called it when I was a kid. Willie instead of penis, for example. Willie instead of a penis. Or I mean, I think we used to say like a fanny instead of a vagina or whatever it is because a lot of parents will write in and they'll ask questions like should we just be using the correct anatomy from day one

from the age of two so how do those conversations happen look the conversations should be happening from birth and it's not that you're asking for consent to do anything or you know what i when i explain about body safety is if once you have this knowledge you can't unknow it right so you know that from my perspective I know that having body safety and having that understanding protects kids so when we talk to our kids as little babies we're explaining what we're doing to them at every stage hey I'm just going to put your nappy on I'm just going to wipe I'm just going to do this because when we model bodily autonomy and sharing what every part of this process is is when an adult does something you know without verbalizing it without asking for

permission because eventually when they get to an age you're going to go would you like to do it yourself or would you like my help you know you can try today like you can try and wipe your bum or you know I mean every parent uh has probably sat there at the toilet door going come on you can do it because you know they're like no you wipe it yeah I'm at the phase at the moment where I'm like wipe your own bum I don't want to do it anymore you wipe my bum it's I feel like it's every parent's calling yeah yeah but you know like it's the same with bathing and showering with your kids and stuff like that you know there comes a time where hey you know just reiterating that they have the right to shower with without an adult or they have the right to eventually you

know yes we have to be there to make sure that they don't drown in the bath or slip in the bath or whatever but hey you know whenever you're ready you don't have to shower with us anymore would you like to share with us or would you like to share with on your own today you know just giving them options and making sure that they know that they always have a choice and when I say you start that from birth you're always letting them know what you're doing to them and then you know when they get to that two three year old stage i mean my daughter was like a chatty kathy she was blah blah blah blah blah from you know the minute she could she was singing and dancing from 12 months old like and so she was easy to teach because she was just like yeah and you could

have that conversation with her and i understand some parents are like i can't my two-year-old's not properly you know completing sentence yet but what we model to them is really important when they say no and we stop I know that we can't always stop every time but we stop and we go okay what's going on for you right now why do you want me to stop you know giving them an option because child sex offenders won't they won't give them an option and so when a child knows that safe adults and safe people model consent and they they respect my boundaries and they they make me know what's going to happen to me when someone doesn't they know the next step is to teach them to come and get help for that so in regards to this you talk about it all the time

and back to your question about private parts we use the language of private parts but when we are talking to our kids hey i'm just going to okay time to clean our vagina you know like when i was in the shower with my own daughter at two or three years old she was a bit you know i don't want to wash my body today and we had like a game where we used to like name the parts as we wash them and so you know it's just another piece of anatomy it's just another part of their body and from my experience as a detective the kids who didn't have this knowledge who couldn't name their private parts those cases didn't usually go forward because when you go into the courtroom and you're charged an offender and literally child couldn't tell you what part was actually

touched or what happened then it's never going to go any further so our kids need to know what their anatomy is and they need to be confident in talking about it because if they can't talk about it to you then they can't talk about it to a police officer off the back of that we are jumping ahead a bit but how hard is it to have these cases brought forward and convicted because in my experience from the things that i have seen it's incredibly difficult i'd love to know why Just last night, I shared a story that came out in the news yesterday. The ABC released it. And it was a Perth man who has just been, I'm assuming you know Perth man, who has just

been sentenced to seven years in prison. Seven years. And he had been caught having built a special room in his house with all the information he needed on how to take a child from nearby and keep them in his house. And he got seven years. Why is it so hard to get these cases to court? And why are we so soft on the convictions? That's a very interesting question and probably one I'm not able

to give it full justice. But the reason why it's so hard is because inherently we have not believed children. When I first started in this space, there was a warning that judges gave to juries to say that uncorroborated evidence from a child is not enough. So basically it's not trustworthy. So corroboration is when you have other evidence

to support a child's evidence right so we just generally don't trust that children are telling the truth and there's just not enough there in regards to how we act and behave i mean only one in three adults believe a child when they tell them that they've been sexually abused you know 90 of all sexual abuse is by someone known to the child yet we trust an adult over a child every almost every time i think it's around five percent of cases where a child has gone to police or it's been reported and then it's been redacted like taken back you know when a child says oh no I've got it wrong kind of thing and usually I'm not the expert in this space but I saw a presentation where they were saying that the reason for that usually is because the parents aren't supportive

when a child goes and reports and then they take it back is because one of the parents hasn't supported them or or whatever and there's a lot of reasons but in Australia unfortunately we have and it's not unfortunate we need to have a system that innocent until proven guilty kind of thing and yeah the reason for it is is because you know most sexual abuse is done behind closed doors it's sneaky they're meticulous at planning they're grooming they're meticulous at when they do it so that no one's a witness and no one trusts kids so you know I think it's under one percent of child sexual abuse cases that go to trial you know a lot of child sexual abuse cases is a guilty plea before it gets to trial but when they go to trial less than one percent actually get found guilty so

i can't tell you the stats on all of that which is scary off the top of my head when you talk about i mean you said i didn't clock exactly what the statistic was but it was majority of these cases are by someone that you know someone within your family over 90 over 90 what are the red flags to look out for not just in child behavior but like what are the red flags to look out for in these people like because I'm guessing that for the majority of families where this happens a lot of them would say there was no signs I never thought that uncle or that friend or that sport coach or whoever it is could ever do this to us they always seemed as though they were the perfect person what are the red flags to look for in your close relationships the thing is is

that grooming which happens to both the child and the adults is very much like nurture so grooming is like love bombing a child into believing that they're special like you know I mean look all kids are special and we should always treat them with respect but it's like literally making a child feel so special and so uh wanted by that individual and it's usually done you know in plain sight so you know you just think that this person's so amazing because they treat your child so well and yet you know they're giving them lollies and they're giving them treats and they're sneaking them things that you know you might not be okay with one of the things that I get really grumpy about with especially grandparents and it's not an attack on grandparents but grandparents and

my daughter's grandparents used to do this they would give her a cake at the shop or like a lolly at the shop and they'd say don't tell mum and so you know secrets are very big in regards to you know when a child is being groomed there's secrets involved so for older kids sometimes it might be showing them pornography or giving them alcohol because then it puts a wedge between the child and the adult relationship the safe adult because oh they've given me something that I know I'm not allowed to have and I'm not going to tell my parent because that I will be the one who gets in trouble now this adult over here who's doing the the thing knows that that works really well so you know that it keeps that secret light secrets going on and for little kids it could be

not respecting their bodily autonomy, their private space. I saw a lot of the time it would be like walking in on them getting changed or trying to find ways to get children semi-nude or nude when they had them for sleepovers or playdates or hanging out. It just seems like innocent stuff. But in the meantime, they're normalizing being nude, touching them in places that might be on the border of being inappropriate so you know red flags are trying to get them alone you might have multiple kids in the family but that one child always gets picked to go and have a special play date or a special time with that person you know that's a red flag to me so there's a lot of red flags like i said grooming looks like nurture in a lot of cases it looks like being just

giving special treatment to children but if the connection isn't there between you and your child if you're struggling, if the child is struggling, then that person comes in and is kind of like the saviour and makes them feel very special. And so it can override what you're trying to do as a parent or if it is another parent sometimes. Can you describe the difference in the prevalence of in-person physical assault and grooming versus online grooming? Look, it's almost impossible to be able to tell you the difference because a lot of kids never a report or tell anyone that they've been groomed online. And then we also are dealing with, you know, our current statistics, which are only a year and a half old. We know that one in three

girls, one in five boys. So the prevalence is really hard because like I said, most kids don't say, tell anyone, don't say anything to anyone when it's online, because the online world is really easy to not forget about. But when you're behind a screen, behind a screen, it doesn't feel as real yet the abuse is still you know if if they've been groomed into providing a nude or you know talking sexually which happens a lot as well you know or they've been something's happened in a game where they've been sexually assaulted in a game which can happen as well you know a lot of children don't realize until later that that's what happened so there's not a lot of information out there you know we know that about one in two children will be approached

by a stranger online so it's once they're online it's kind of like the wild wild west yeah yeah it's hard to document yeah and a lot of kids don't even realize the risks because for them behind the screen is just it's like a fantasy it's a made-up place it's not tangible do you also think i mean this might be a naive thing to say because we work you know in this world and like obviously the online space is accessible to us and i think that when you look at kind of our parents generation or this gap that's happened not even necessarily our parents generation but like the adults who are parenting say teenagers now who may have missed the I guess the insidiousness of things like roblox of different online gaming platforms because

they just thought their kids were safe playing the game and they didn't quite know what was happening do you think that there has been a shift in I guess parental perception now we've obviously got the change in having kids not being able to access social media until they turn 15. So it's like there have been things that have been put in place now. And I guess like the flow on effect, has it made a difference thus far to parents who are parenting younger kids now? There's more awareness. Yes. And so the parents of today that are having children right now, you know, younger children are going, yeah, I actually think that this is not safe and not, this is harmful. You talk about the social media ban to 16, you know, this generation of kids is

not going to feel the effects of that it's the next generation the parents now who are having you know toddlers and stuff and I said that all along I think it's the right move to put in some guardrails for parents to feel like but you know parents do what parents do and that's they do whatever they want so the thing is is that it's more about creating a culture where we understand more a lot of people my generation we joined Facebook thinking it was just this great place and we shared so much of our lives right we have been conditioned to share everything we have been conditioned to normalize being able to say whatever we want whatever we think and we have gone about that for the last 20 years facebook's been around 20 years this year so we

have gone around thinking we can say what we want do what we want and no one can stop us right and that's fair but what effect does that have on the next generation and the generation after that tell us a little bit about grok we're hearing and seeing it everywhere what is it exactly and why is it such an issue well it's disgusting really but a grok is just ai who you can put a photo in and ask it to take the clothes off it's a nudify ai i mean it does other things but you know it's basically i don't know what they're thinking and nudify apps the federal government is looking at banning nudify apps in australia so they will not be able to be on your so they should there is no purpose other than to abuse people there is nothing nudify apps there is no reason for them

to even exist other than to abuse people if you are sharing publicly just consider maybe not having their full image in there like as in it's in so they can't be used in ai you know take some shots that are from the side or from them facing away you know more artistic shots because the thing is is that we just don't want their image to be used in ai if we can help it because i consider that for myself as well sometimes i think oh am i okay with my image being trained in ai it'd be used in ai you know we just this is only the beginning oh totally and how much ai has changed like i mean i feel like even myself i've just in the last couple of weeks started using it to do it sounds so stupid but transition videos and i didn't know i didn't know the level of stuff that

you're capable of creating with it anything and i think that a lot of people don't realize that And I guess even for me in the last couple of weeks, I've been like, it's pretty profound how much it has changed and how adaptive it is. And how quickly as well. And how quickly it's changed. Yeah. Because no one who's sharing photos of their kids online is thinking that's what's going to happen with it.

Like they're just not. Maybe that's the conversation though. And maybe that's why we're having these conversations. But Christy, tell me, I think back to my childhood and some of my fondest memories are sleepovers with my friends, like going to my best friend's house, five or six girls would go over and you'd have a weekend of it and you'd get your pizza and you'd watch your movies and you'd make beds in the lounge room and it would it was just such a really fond memory for me and for many people but there's a lot of ignorance that comes along with that and a lot of parents now are

questioning whether sleepovers should even be a thing as somebody that is in the industry that you are in with the experience that you have would you let your kids have a sleepover with conditions so my daughter was allowed to have sleepovers but it was very well vetted and there was very like there was a lot of considerations involved you know how long have i known this family do they have similar values to me who's going to be at the home whilst my daughter's there are there other kids going to be there is there going to be other you know adults there uh where are they sleeping what are they allowed to do during the night like we used to have movie nights right and used to stay up all night watching movies and trying who goes to sleep first you

know they're the loser they're the loser yeah loser terrible word but you know what i mean that's what it was like but you know today kids are sitting up all night gaming or going on things like uh omegle which is not a thing anymore but there's only tv and stuff like that and you know they're doing things online and we think they're safe because they're in a bedroom well actually they're not safe because of online sometimes and the other thing is is that you know a lot of cases that I had where I was investigating child sexual abuse involved a sleepover and you know whilst a child is out of your care or out of your space you know a sibling or a another adult or an invited adult to that home would you know abuse the child there so or

another child you know like that happens a lot as well where children and because they're at someone else's home they don't necessarily feel like they can say no that they can leave that they can you know who do they go to in that moment and so I just think that I might sound anti-sleepover I'm anti-sleepovers when safety is not considered and as someone who has hosted sleepovers I was the most boring sleepover parent ever everyone had to hand in their devices at a certain time frame there was you know old school movies going on like but at the at the same time most of the time all the kids were like Christy can you tell us this Christy can I if we you know there was questions being asked about things. And because I would honestly tell kids and then I would tell

the parents that I'd had that conversation with them. So, you know, like they, they came to me for advice. Everyone can just send their kids to you for education. It's like, go and have a class with Christy. I also, a question as well. I mean, this is kind of probably something we will link back up to earlier in the chat is like, when we talk about age appropriate conversations with children, it's hard to know what is an age appropriate conversation. Like I have a now six-year-old she is really smart like Marley is so smart she just gets a lot of stuff and like I have body autonomy conversations with her and her question is but why you tell me I can't take a photo of my private parts why not it's just a private part it's the same as my hand or it's

the same as my this it's she's very good at trying to ask well you're not giving me a reason you've made a rule but you didn't give me a reason and the reason's really scary so I don't know what is the age appropriate reason to give a six-year-old as to why they can't do those things you know because yeah it's almost too big but she is the type of person who if there's not a reason she's not going to do the rule like and every other rule has a reason hold hands you're going to get hit by a car you can't do this because that's the consequence but the consequence for this just feels too big to actually explain okay what I would have probably said to my six-year-old at that time is because it's actually against the law to take for you to have photos of your private

on your devices which is exactly what we said yeah so you know she she knows that she's actually breaking a law by i mean it's not a breaking a law but if it ended up in someone else's hands or whatever so i think you know if it ended up in someone else's device or in some on someone else's phone even you know a parent's phone it could be seen as you know child exploitation material she doesn't need to know all that though so it's just about the fact that private pictures or private photos of our privates is actually you know we're not meant to take those because our body safety rules is we don't take photos of our privates we don't let you know we don't touch other people's and we don't people don't touch ours yeah so you know like it's just kind of going and it but why

well because it's actually against the law to have photos of children's private parts on our devices i know the type of kid and i love them for it like they're the type of kid you go well why and you put it back on them and say oh what do you think is the reason do you have any idea why this is the other thing like i i have you know the conversations with kids cards to start opening up conversations around this stuff and she's the type of kid that you know you've got to ask her what she knows first because she probably knows way more than you realize and you know kids in school kids in you know my eight-year-old came home and told me that she was never having sex you were like good good yeah but like my mind went why is she talking

about this right and so she was at you know someone at school who was a little bit older than her had gone around and shown them photos from a book that they'd seen and we're talking years two three yeah of adults having sex so you know like the thing is is our kids talk about this stuff if they hear it from older siblings if they hear it on the internet if they see it on something and this is how harmful sexualized behaviors and children harming other children happen is because they see something and then they copy it they see something and then they do it to each other and so why we need to have these body safety conversations like I've got written in my conversations with kids cards is so that first of all they know that what unsafe feels like and I

really wanted your listeners to know that we teach our kids how when they feel unsafe what does it feel like in our body we call it gut feelings or instinct or intuition our kids what does it feel like when I feel unsafe? You know, what does it feel like when I feel safe? You know, my daughter would say at two, three years old, I feel warm. I feel like I'm getting a cuddle. Okay. So what does it feel like when you feel unsafe? It feels, I get butterflies in my tummy. I feel sick. Okay. That's cool. When you feel that you come and tell me, you come and tell a safe adult and we then work out who their safe adults are. And we ask them to name five adults who make them feel safe, make them feel heard and listened to and make them feel safe again. So then they know when I feel

unsafe, I go and find a safe adult. That is the help seeking piece to this. It's no point in our kids knowing everything but don't know what to do. And some of the questions that I share in my cards is that what do I do if I feel unsafe? What do I do if someone makes me feel unsafe? What do I do if someone asks me to see my private parts, you know, for little kids? And we're not talking about you know abuse we're just using different language for the fact is okay well I go and find my adult or a safe adult or a teacher if it's at school or my carer and I go and tell them and then it's our job as adults to you know make it safe again make them feel safe again we've done it we've talked a lot about different red flags but one that we haven't covered and something that I

think is really important is for parents if your kids haven't spoken to you what are the red flags to look out for that could signal abuse or could signal that something's not right? Yeah. So like I was mentioning about those feelings. So a lot of kids who don't feel safe or are finding it hard to be around someone, they'll say, oh, I've got a headache. I feel sick. I don't feel well. You know, we see that with school refusal. We see that with other things as well. All of a sudden they don't want to be around someone. They're literally hanging on to you and don't want to go to the person that's, and it might not be about sexual abuse. It could be that this person's mistreated them or made them feel unsafe right but you know it's a red flag

if your child who used to go to that person and was happy to go to that person all of a sudden doesn't want to why what's going on there you know children will display they could have complete behavior changes from you know your calm compliant happy kid to completely not you know they're disruptive they're angry they're you know they're doing lots of things and in actual fact you can see the opposite as well because some of our more uh boisterous kids can all of a sudden become really compliant because the only thing they can control is their behavior and they decide to control that they start being a good kid i speak to survivors all the time and they explain that there are one of two ways they're either being really compliant because their abuser or their

offender would use their behavior as a way to abuse them you've been naughty i have to do this to you whereas some offenders the kid will be screaming out for you know someone to pay attention so they get naughtier or and there's no such thing as a naughty kid only kids who are learning but their behavior becomes really massively an issue or disruptive so we see a lot of that because they're just screaming out for someone to pay attention so we have to go inwards to the child and say what's going on for you what's happening is there anything I need to know A thing, I guess, that has really sat uncomfortably with me recently is around the situation that's been happening in Australia around daycares. And now I know that there are incredible childcare education workers out there.

I know that there is some incredible daycares, but there have also been some absolutely fucking frightening stuff that's been coming out of perpetrators who have been able to access working within childcare organizations, whether it's daycares or there's loads of different things that have come out recently. how do we as parents assess the risk and keep our kids safe when we have to go to work when we have to make options and choose places to be able to provide for our families you know most people that are sending their kids to daycare are doing it out of necessity not because it's a joy to be away from their kids five days a week yeah and I mean I was one of those parents my daughter was in full-time care whilst I was in the police academy whilst I was you know working shift work. Totally. I've had every form of child care and I knew what I knew. So I totally understand how parents must be feeling. First of all, we've got to remember that it's not everyone.

It can be anyone, but it's not everyone. And second of all, the reason why we have some of these people in these places is because they know that children in those areas are vulnerable. When I was in the Child Abuse Squad, I used to make remarks. I'll be like, they're teachers, they're coaches, they're priests, they're this, they're that. I can't believe how, you know, they go into these places where kids are and one of the old senior constables detectives said to me well how do you think they get access to kids and be trusted because they go where there's trust it's automatic trust right we have to trust those people when we're in them and I was like oh yeah that's true and to me I was like that's just freaky right and I guess a lot of people parents

are coming into what I was feeling back then as well but with regards to early childhood education it really comes down to trusting your gut and asking the right questions. And I do have a blog post on my website about what questions to ask. And it comes around, you know, and also paying attention when you go for a walkthrough or when you go and pick up your kids, you know, what are they like with their management of staff? Are they struggling to get staff? Is it always short staffed when you go there and you pick up, you know, now and again, and this was an advice from an early childhood educator actually, is now and again, if you get the opportunity during your lunch break to drop in and see what it's like at lunchtime because the the most times that children

are at risk in an early childhood education center is pickups and drop-offs and lunchtimes because they're short on staff because whilst you know the staff are having lunch there's maybe one or two educators watching a group of kids you know when it's early in the morning and people have kids are getting dropped off there might only be one educator for a while so that's when they're most you know kids are at most at risk so what are they doing to manage the staff shortages or the staff ratios at that time and also what is the attitude towards you know if you ask questions are you treated like a burden are you treated like this is really important to them the culture of the center is everything the culture of the management is everything if they act like it's

never a burden to put you at ease and make you feel better and they have all of their red you know all of their information easily accessible then they're taking it seriously question how often does an offender repeat offend the average or so they say i mean look there's lots of research around this but the average offender has about 15 to 20 victims in their lifetime jesus wow i mean when we talk about male offending it can be a lot more female offenders tend to and we've had a few recently female child sexual offenders tend to be a lot more focused on the one child like they become very obsessed with that child so they don't have as many victims over a longer period but they use again they use their nurture against them so do male offenders but male offending and

female offending are same same but different if that makes sense i mean it's a whole psychology thing but they can re-offend over and over again over 50 percent of child sex offenders on the sex offender register will re-offend being caught doesn't stop them yet we give them such a slap on the wrist in terms of their sentencing is there anything else that you think is really important for the listeners to know that we haven't covered yet oh I think I was just talking about so I had someone come to me the other day and say I just don't know how you keep doing this like how do you show up every day and and especially with what's going on in the world right now what we're seeing in the media on and on like non-stop right and what's been released from the US all of the

stuff it's just horrendous what's going on and in fact I struggled for a few days there I was like I don't know why I'm doing this anymore like how am I helping anyone so when I get like that I pause for a minute I get off socials I spend time with my family I spend time in nature but then what I do is I remember that all I need to do is focus on my family my child I just need to keep my family safe my children safe whoever's in my world is safe and then you know I have conversations I start you know having conversations with people protecting kids in my own small circles so I think what parents need to remember is when everything seems too much and too big and this topic is really hard just focus on your kids your job and your role which you guys said at the

very beginning is to protect your kids and you know it's not fair that kids get abused and it's not fair that the world is the way it is but we can only focus on our kids and make sure our kids are safe so just focus on your family and to have those conversations be open if there's one thing that predators use against you is your lack of connection with your kids if you don't feel connected or your child doesn't feel connected to you they will use that against you so however you can connect with your kids you know sit down with them have conversations kick the footy with them play mario kart with them whatever it is that your kid needs you to sit with them and do just whether it's 10 minutes a day half an hour a week you know whatever it is take them for an

ice cream but connect with your kid as much as possible kids as much as possible because that's what they're going to use against you thank you so much for coming and being a part of the pod and also for i guess i mean ultimately continuously being the person who's at the coalface of these conversations and at the coalface of seeing truly like the most horrific side of humanity and for anyone who would like to know more or to follow more we're going to link all of your details in the show notes where to follow you on instagram as well all that information will be there thank you