This is a very disturbing story of one survivor's frustrating struggle to get away from her care-home abusers in Australia. The story has much in common with "Sheep Skinned Wolves, The Emma Fretton Story", which was written by Emma and me (see sidebar for link).
By investigative reporter Katri Uibu
Topic:Child Abuse
Mon 12 May 2025Monday 12 May
For $1 million per child a year, you’d expect unlimited opportunities, stellar care — opulence.
Indeed, governments are at pains to convince taxpayers that group homes for children in state care are “therapeutic” trauma-informed facilities.
But the ABC has unearthed cases of a senior worker contacting a child sex abuser as part of a “safety” check on a child, current sexual exploitation of a girl at risk of death, and one department’s attempt to avoid responsibility for decisions that led to assaults.
Warning: This story contains graphic images and descriptions of abuse.
‘Safety’ check with a child sex abuser
A bloodied sore festers on her cheek, bruises swell on her wrists and abdomen.
This is Saachi Stoneley under the care of the Queensland child protection department at age 14.
While living in residential care homes for children in state care, she is preyed on by men selling the promise of drugs and counterfeit love.
Residential care is an increasingly utilised model whereby child protection departments outsource the care of vulnerable children to agencies running on rostered staff.
In Victoria and Queensland, staff can work with these highly complex kids without having completed the bare minimum — a TAFE certificate — first.
Many children, Saachi among them, would escape these houses notorious for violence, abuse and property destruction.
In April 2021, a senior worker at one of the homes, Be the Change, repeatedly reached out to a man in his 40s who was known to sexually abuse Saachi.
The texts, sent across 10 days to Benjamin ‘Benji’ Stansmore, instructed:
“Hello please tell saachi to call me so I don’t have to call the police.”
Saachi’s mother Siobhan had for months alleged to the police, the department and Be the Change that Stansmore was raping her child.
When Siobhan found out about this “inappropriate” exchange — and the worker’s perceived reluctance to engage the police — she took it up with the department responsible for placing Saachi with Be the Change.
To her disbelief, the department explained it away as a safety check.
“[The senior worker] did contact Mr Stansmore by his mobile telephone as a means of trying to locate Saachi, and he confirmed that Saachi was okay,” a department worker’s email said.
Siobhan found it “insane” because Stansmore was the very person putting her child at risk.
A review by the department later also found Siobhan’s concern “not substantiated”.
It said Saachi had identified Stansmore to be her “boyfriend”, and that part of a safety plan “is to contact all people that may have regular contact with the young person to locate them”.
“…Saachi was able to be located by contacting known people she associates with, however, it is understandable you would not want Saachi in the company of Mr Stansmore — the fact remains she often would be and he was an avenue to establish contact with her and ascertain her level of safety,” the review said.
For more than a year, the department refused to move Saachi from the Fraser Coast in south-east Queensland, where she was being abused.
This is a great report and is worth linking to the original presentation for the rest of the story....
Last year, she turned 18 and was finally allowed, by law, to tell her story.
