Home care provider fined for putting staff at risk

Marist Youth Care has admitted it failed to provide a safe work environment for two women who were regularly sexually harassed and threatened, and forced to barricade themselves inside an office.

The organisation failed to roster male staff at a house where concerns had been raised repeatedly about the young residents, aged between 14 and 16, identified as being 'high risk' of sexualised behaviours and aggression towards women.

Between January and April, 2019, there were about 33 occasions at the house when a female worker was rostered on to perform a sleep over shift and was alone in the group home with the first of the three youths.

One worker took a month's leave after she was sexually assaulted but then continued to take casual shifts at the house where the same resident, given the pseudonym 'Liam', continued to make sexually inappropriate comments towards her and other female workers.

At the times the area manager was asked to attend the house, but she declined to attend.

Despite those issues, a second young person was moved from a Newcastle address to live at the home in July, 2019.

While a risk assessment was done in relation to the suitability of the placement in terms of the risks to the two boys, there was no assessment of the risk posed to the workers by 'Derek', or Derek and Liam living in the house together.

In August another youth joined the household, and again the potential for the risk of sexualised behaviour was categorised as high, but the house manager and staff were not consulted about his placement.

Two days later, a female staff member made calls to the after-hours response team after locking herself in the office at 10.30am due to the residents' behaviour and being in the house on her own.

She was told there was no-one coming. She was advised to call the police if she was threatened, but to remain in the staff room.

About 6.30pm that night, she locked herself in the staff room again, along with a male co-worker, as the young residents abused them and threatened to kill them.

When she finally left, one of the youths tried to stop her getting into her car, then got into the car with her, and squeezed in on top of her, reaching for her keys and bag and touching her.

Another resident was trying to force open the boot of the car before climbing onto the roof, while the third resident was trying to get in through a window.

The two women at the centre of the matter said they believed the problems escalated when the second and third boys joined the household.

Their concerns were raised with the house manager, the area manager, and management, saying female workers did not feel safe at the house and that there needed to be a male worker rostered on to work with female workers.

In pleading guilty to the offence, Marist Youth accepted that it was reasonably practicable to roster male workers at the house.

One of the two female workers was diagnosed with anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder, and suffered panic attacks relating to the sexual touching incident, a judgement handed down in the District Court said.

The second woman was also diagnosed with PTSD, generalised anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder and also made a workers compensation claim.

In 2019, Marist Youth Care had 30 properties in NSW and employed 354 workers.

By 2024, that number had grown to more than 50 homes operating in Sydney, the Hunter, Western NSW and the ACT, employing more than 500 workers to provide support to about 1300 children and young people annually.

The provider should have known from Liam's history and his behaviour when he was the sole occupant at the house that he posed a risk of assault and inappropriate sexual behaviour towards workers.

"The offender also knew that Derek and John had a history of assault and the offender itself had concluded that their introduction to (the house) was likely to present a high risk of inappropriate sexual behaviour and aggression by the residents towards female workers," District Court Judge Andrew Scotting said.

The area manager's response to the earlier incidents was "seriously inadequate" he said.

Marist had been contracted to provide care under the Intensive Therapeutic Care Model of out-of-home-care which the NSW Department of Communities and Justice introduced in or about June 2018.

However, transition to that model required transformational change, including the retraining of its workers and the recruitment of new qualified workers.

"The timeframes for the offender to comply with its contractual obligations was unrealistic and the offender struggled from the outset to train and recruit staff and to find suitable houses for the programs that it had agreed to provide," Judge Scotting said.

The maximum penalty for the offence was $1.5 million, but a large fine was not required to achieve specific deterrence, Judge Scotting said, given that once the sexual touching incident was reported (some months after the incident) Marist took immediate steps to make changes.

The fine of $400,000 was reduced by 25 per cent due to the plea of guilty.