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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-10-15 Daily Xml
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SCHOOLCHILDREN, INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:40): I rise to speak about a fairly concerning issue that relates to my portfolio responsibility as the shadow minister for education. I was approached, through a colleague's office, by the parent of a child at a category 1 school. It is probably best if I read into Hansard the letter that was sent by my colleague to the minister, asking for an explanation. It states:

...currently there is a five year old boy who attends the school with an unusual sexual interest in other children. He has been asking other boys for sex and has asked other children to touch his penis. The boy allegedly has urinated on [my constituent's son] and has been generally bullying him.

The minister's response came back some six months later (by the looks of it) and the allegations about the sexual behaviour of the child were completely ignored. The minister had some handy advice for my colleague. He states in his letter:

I am informed that this child needed specific training about the appropriate use of a urinal which is not uncommon for boys from single-parent families who may have never seen one before.

The minister's response to an alarming claim of the learnt sexual behaviour of a five year old is that he does not know how to use a urinal. This raised alarm bells for me as a parent. It raised alarm bells for me as someone who has spent eight years on the Unley Primary School council and someone who was concerned about what I had read, particularly because of my portfolio area of education.

My colleague put in an FOI request and we received a reply from the department some months later. I will give you an idea of the time line. The initial request was dated 12 December 2007 and on 1 October we received a reply from the department that identifies (in 2½ pages) similar behaviour by other students. The names have been blanked out for obvious reasons, but the students are identified by a number. There appear to be four different numbers. Chris Robinson has written a letter in which he states:

These incidents of inappropriate behaviour are of significant concern to me. Murraylands district office continue to work with the students and teachers involved to ensure an improvement in behaviour.

The FOI released what those offences were but I am a bit reluctant to read some of them into Hansard because I know that if I say the slightest controversial thing in this chamber the Attorney-General runs to the Greek community in my electorate and says, 'Look, Pisoni is not fit to represent you.' I will not read out the graphic language in here, but I will raise some of the issues. For example, there is a report here of a child exposing himself to others at swimming and asking girls for oral sex (in a more graphic term). This is a primary school.

Other incidents reported here include continually touching boys in the groin and even the case of a plastic penis being taken to school and used to harass other students. The disturbing thing about that is that the child, at a very young age, not only knew what it was but knew what to do with it. This is all learnt behaviour: Freda Briggs has said that it is learnt behaviour. The FOI also revealed that the punishment for these children was that they were removed from the classroom and had to do yard duty for 10 or 20 minutes. That is how the school appears to have dealt with this situation.

We are still trying to establish whether Families and Communities has been involved and whether it has interviewed the parents of these children. In my opinion, these children are victims of child abuse themselves and they have now become the instigators of child abuse amongst other children.

Time expired.

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