Dubai Hospital CEO’s Affair With Filipina Nurse Ends In Tragedy When She’s Found Dead In Server Room – Part 2

Using the word inevitable about the relationship’s beginning and using it the way a person uses a word when they mean it as a description of a trap, not a choice.

Saying, “I don’t know how to do this without losing everything I came here for.

” She described one further thing that Grace had told her on that Monday, which she had not included in her initial statement to Dubai police because she had not been asked the right question and which she had spent 8 months deciding how to say correctly.

She said that Grace had told her she had met Khaled in the basement the week before that Monday and that he had been angry in the quiet controlled way that she found more frightening than loudness.

That she had told him again she wanted to end things.

That he had reminded her precisely methodically without raising his voice.

Of how much she stood to lose if the relationship ended in a way he did not manage.

That she had come back from that meeting shaking in a way that Rosario had noticed and that Grace had attributed to tiredness.

and that Rosario had not believed at the time, but had accepted because Grace was a private person and Rosario understood the boundaries of a friendship.

That she wished every day since February that she had pushed past the boundary.

That one time the courtroom was silent in the way that a room is silent when everyone in it is absorbing the same weight simultaneously.

Alzabi rested the prosecution’s case on the 11th day of the trial’s third week.

In her closing argument, she addressed the defense’s central contention that the footage established presence but not premeditated intent with four words that she spoke at a normal volume without theatrical emphasis.

He chose the location.

She paused for a full 10 seconds before she continued.

He had built a surveillance system that covered 1,19 doors and 93 cameras and generated access records accurate to the tenth of a second.

He had read the post-upgrade audit report and identified the one space in his own institution that his system could not see.

He had returned to that space 11 times.

He had used it for meetings that could not be logged.

He had known on the Wednesday afternoon that Grace Navaro followed him down that stairwell that nothing that happened inside that server room would appear in any record that anyone reviewed.

That was not escalation.

That was infrastructure.

You do not build infrastructure for events.

You do not anticipate.

The judges deliberated for 9 days.

Pay attention to what happened after the verdict because what happened after does not resolve cleanly and it was never going to and the people who lived through it deserve to have that acknowledged rather than smoothed into a conclusion that the facts do not support.

Dr. Khaled Casemi was convicted of premeditated murder.

The verdict was delivered on a Tuesday morning in November, 9 months after Grace Navaro died on the floor of the B2 server room.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment under UAE penal code provisions applicable to premeditated homicide with an additional 10-year consecutive sentence on a secondary charge of abuse of institutional authority.

A charge that had been introduced by the prosecution specifically to name in legal terms the structural conditions that had made Grace’s situation possible.

The secondary charge was unusual in UAE homicide proceedings.

Its inclusion in the verdict was noted by legal observers as a deliberate judicial acknowledgement that the crime had not occurred in a vacuum of individual psychology, but within an architecture of power that the defendant had constructed and exploited.

The judge’s written reasoning on the secondary charge ran to four pages.

It described with careful precision the relationship between institutional authority and personal vulnerability, and the specific culpability of a man who had used the former to manufacture the latter.

College showed no visible reaction when the verdict was read.

He sat with the stillness of a man who had spent 52 years practicing control as a way of life and was not going to abandon it at the moment it was most conspicuously insufficient.

His lead defense advocate announced an intention to appeal within minutes of the verdict.

The grounds for appeal, procedural objections to the inclusion of the 90-day pattern evidence, and a renewed argument that the forensic evidence did not establish specific intent were the same arguments that had failed across 11 weeks of trial, reframed for a higher court.

Legal observers gave the appeal limited prospects.

The evidentiary record was too complete and too specifically corroborated to create the kind of doubt that appellet proceedings require.

Miam Malcasm was not in the courtroom when the verdict was read.

She had not attended the trial at any point.

She had given her statement to Dubai police in the days following Grace’s death.

A statement that Lieutenant Elmensuri had described in her case notes as the most precisely delivered witness account she had taken in 11 years of homicide work.

and she had thereafter made herself available to the prosecution for any further clarification required and had otherwise retreated from the public dimension of the case with the same deliberateness she had brought to every decision she had made since the parking ticket notification arrived at 11:04 pm on a Tuesday in February 3 months after college’s arrest.

Miam moved with her three children to her parents’ home in Sharah.

She resigned from the charitable foundation board she had chaired.

She did not give interviews.

She did not make statements.

The few people who remained close to her described her as managing.

A word that carries in that context the specific weight of a person who is doing what needs to be done each day and declining to perform the additional task of explaining how they feel about it to anyone who asks.

She had built 18 years around a man she had understood as controlled and had discovered in a basement server room at 9:47 pm on a Wednesday.

that the control she had found reassuring had been directed entirely inward and had left room for everything else.

What she does with that understanding is hers, not available for summary or resolution by anyone outside it.

Her children were 15, 12, and nine at the time of their father’s arrest.

They are older now.

What they understand and how they have been helped to understand it and what it costs them to carry it is not part of the public record and should not be.

Some things belong to the people living them.

The Navaro family in Iloilo City received the news of the conviction through a call from the Philippine Overseas Labor Office counselor staff in Dubai who had been supporting the family through the investigation and trial process.

Robert Navaro, Grace’s father, gave a single statement to a newspaper in Iloilo City after the verdict.

He said, “She worked hard.

She took care of everyone.

She deserved to come home.

” He did not say anything else publicly.

He did not need to.

Those three sentences contained everything that mattered about his daughter’s life in the correct order of priority.

What she did, who she did it for, what she deserved, and everything that mattered about what had been taken from her, which was the same three things in the same order.

Lord Navaro, Grace’s mother, did not give any statement.

She had taught elementary school for 31 years.

She had taught her students that words were tools, that they had specific purposes and should be used for those purposes and not as performances of feeling.

She used her words in private with the people she loved in the ways that mattered.

What she said to Carlo and to Robert and to the ceiling of their home in Iloilo City in the months after Grace’s death belongs entirely to them.

Carlo Navaro graduated from Apoua University in Manila in June.

For months after his sister’s death, the engineering degree that Grace’s monthly transfers had funded was conferred in a ceremony he attended with his parents.

They had traveled from Iloilo City to Manila for it.

Carlo wore the graduation gown and held the diploma and took the photographs and went through every element of the occasion with the awareness that his sister had paid for it and would not see it, and that the most honest thing he could do with what she had built was to use it completely and without waste.

He transferred Grace’s final month’s restitution payment.

The court ordered some directed to her family estate paid on the first of the following month to their parents’ account.

He transferred it on the first of the month.

He said he wanted to keep the date she had always kept.

The roof in Iloilo City has not needed repair again.

Rosario Bautista left Alor Medical Center 6 weeks after Grace’s death.

She had already secured a transfer to a hospital in Doha before the investigation concluded.

Arranged through the kind of professional networks that Filipino nurses in the Gulf maintain with the specific practicality of people who understand that their employment security is always contingent and that a transferable skill set is the most reliable form of insurance available to them.

She testified at the trial, flew back to Doha the evening after her testimony, concluded, and returned to the rhythms of a working life in a different city in a different country.

She continues to speak in the informal spaces available to her.

Nurses group meetings, migrant worker advocacy conversations, the quiet channels through which information travels among Filipino healthcare workers in the Gulf about the structural conditions that had made Grace’s situation possible.

She does not use the word inevitable without flinching.

She uses it anyway because Grace used it as a description of a trap and Rosario believes the trap should be named accurately, including its name.

The radiology technician from Sri Lanka, whose identity was protected throughout the trial proceedings, gave her written statement to the prosecution and declined to participate further.

She has not spoken publicly about what happened to her at Al Medical Center.

She returned to Calmbo with her end of service entitlements and the restitution payment the court directed to her as a secondary victim of the abuse of institutional authority charge.

And she is building a life there that is her own.

Her name belongs to that life and not to this case.

And the choice she made to keep it there was a reasonable one that deserves to be respected rather than interrogated.

Lieutenant Sarah Elmansuri received a commendation from Dubai police for the investigation.

She spoke once at a law enforcement methodology conference in Abu Dhabi about camera 91B, specifically about the gap between what a system reports and what actually exists and about the methodological discipline of reading primary source documents rather than relying on system generated summaries.

She described finding the camera number on the architectural floor plan without a corresponding entry in the security archive and the specific habit of mind that had led her to notice the discrepancy rather than accept the archive as complete because it had been presented as complete.

She presented this not as a story about instinct or dramatic revelation but as a story about documentation practice.

She said the system told us there were 93 cameras.

The floor plan told us there were 94.

The question is whether you read the floor plan.

She received a standing ovation.

She found this slightly embarrassing and sat down quickly.

Alnor Medical Center completed the security system integration that had been listed as pending since 2019 within 4 months of Khaled’s conviction.

The new executive leadership, the board had restructured completely in the months following the arrest, with three members resigning and two new independent directors appointed, commissioned a full external audit of the hospital’s institutional governance practices with specific attention to employment structures affecting visa dependent staff.

The audit’s recommendations published in redacted form included a series of policy changes regarding reporting mechanisms for visa sponsored employees experiencing workplace coercion, anonymous escalation pathways, and mandatory third-party review of any personnel action initiated by senior leadership affecting staff in dependent visa categories.

The changes were described in the board’s public statement as reflecting the hospital’s commitment to institutional integrity.

Whether they reflect something deeper than institutional reputation management is a question that requires years of implementation to answer.

Camera 91B was replaced with a properly integrated unit during the security upgrade.

The DVR unit from 2016 dusty red standby light 90-day loop 3 years of unreed footage was decommissioned and transferred to evidence storage where it will remain through the appeal period and beyond.

The footage it contains has been copied to secure servers, backed up in triplicate, indexed by date and timestamp.

It is among the most completely documented evidence packages in Dubai police’s homicide files for the year in question.

The camera that no one checked in the room that no one entered, recording continuously to a device no one monitored, had produced the most complete visual record of a crime that its perpetrator had specifically designed to be unrecordable.

He had known about the DVR.

He had read about it in the inexure on page 31 of the audit report.

He had categorized it as a legacy device pending decommission, which is what it was.

What he had not considered, because it had never been relevant before, and because the relevant fact was genuinely obscure, was that the DVR’s 90-day overwrite cycle meant it was actively recording at the moment of his first B2 visit, and that it would continue recording through every subsequent visit, and that the footage would remain on the device until either the decommission was completed or someone came looking.

The decommission was never completed.

Someone came looking.

What is left after the verdict and the sentences and the institutional changes and the statements and the scholarships established in names that should not have needed scholarships established in their memory is a question that does not resolve through any of these mechanisms.

It is the question Rosario Bautista raises in the conversations she continues to have in the informal spaces available to her.

The question is not specifically about cameras or surveillance systems or the gap between what a building security architecture reports and what it actually covers.

The question is about the conditions that allow a man in institutional authority to construct across months a situation in which a young woman from Iloilo City cannot find the exit without losing everything she came for.

The question is about what makes that construction possible and what would need to change to make it less so.

Alnor Medical Center had 1,19 log doors.

It had 93 cameras in its integrated system plus one that wasn’t.

It had movement records accurate to the tenth of a second and a security infrastructure its CEO had personally designed and personally understood.

Grace Navaro had none of these things.

She had Rosario.

She had a Monday conversation.

She had a plan she had not yet finished forming for how to get out without losing what she had built.

She had been building something real.

her parents’ supplemented income and her brother’s engineering degree and her family’s repaired roof and the Sunday video calls that her parents organized their whole week around.

These were not abstractions.

They were the architecture of a life that a 29-year-old woman had constructed through 3 years of disciplined, purposeful work in a city that used her skills efficiently and protected her interests inadequately.

She had been at the medication room on the third floor at 2:09 pm on a Wednesday afternoon, doing her job with the precision that had made her exceptional.

At 2:11 pm, she had entered the stairwell.

At 2:16 pm, she had walked down the B2 corridor for the last time.

The camera mounted at the stairwell entrance had recorded her arrival and would 8 hours later record the woman who found her and would months later contribute to the conviction of the man who had been waiting in the room at the end of the corridor.

The camera could not have helped her at 2:16 pm Nothing in the building could have helped her at 2:16 pm because the gap between what the system saw and what was actually happening was exactly the gap he had identified and used.

What the camera could do and what it did was remember precisely, completely without revision or omission in the faithful and indifferent way of machines that do not know what they are recording only that they are recording and that the footage will be there for whoever comes looking for as long as the loop continues and the device remains powered and no one completes the decommission work order that has been pending since 2019.

No one completed it.

Almansuri came looking.

The footage was there.

Grace Navaro had sent money home on the first of every month without missing once.

The transfers had been automatic, scheduled, reliable, the financial expression of a promise she had made to her family, and kept without interruption across 3 years in a city far from home.

She had not sent the transfer herself in the month she died.

Carlo sent it instead on the first of the following month on the date she had always used, because some things are worth keeping after the person who started them is gone, especially then.

5-year-old Haley and 7-year-old Laura Jane are happily playing with toys at Bluemore Family Daycare in Baitman’s Bay on the New South Wales South Coast.

It’s a center that offers overnight services to parents and takes kids up to 14 years old.

It’s pretty remote, run from the family property of the only carer there, David Tuck.

He’s a jovial man in his 30s, charismatic and approachable, and Haley and LJ’s parents feel comfortable leaving their kids in his home.

But within hours, Tuck will start grooming them.

They realize he has some pretty unusual rules, like an open door policy for the toilets and no underwear while sleeping.

The girls also quickly realize that every night someone sleeps in the big bed with him.

Soon it’s their turn.

And at first they think it’s special to be chosen.

Lucky.

It takes just one night for them to realize the truth.

I’m Gemma Bath and you’re listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world’s most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them.

A warning, this episode does involve discussion about child sexual abuse and suicide.

Please take care while listening.

For years, parents trusted David Tuck to look after their children at his family daycare service in Baitman’s Bay.

It’s only now, decades later, that the extent of his horrific abuse is being revealed, earning him the title of one of Australia’s worst pedophiles.

He was aged between 32 and 37 when he ran the center between 1994 and 1999.

And it’s believed he had more than 55 victims.

He also had access to children across his career running school holiday camps in youth detention as a gymnastics instructor as a school bus driver for intellectually disabled children and as a carer for intellectually disabled children.

He lived and worked across not just New South Wales, but Victoria, Queensland, the ACT, and South Australia.

The true extent of his victims is unknown.

Partly because he died in 2001 just as police were starting to catch up to him.

This isn’t just a story about Tuck and his crimes.

It’s also about the failure of local authorities to take allegations seriously.

Our guests today are currently in court with Eurabadala local council trying to hold them to account for allowing him to operate in the first place and for so long.

One of the other big glaring failures is the fact David Tuck’s name was suppressed and shrouded in silence for years.

That was changed in 2025 thanks to legal blocks overcome by journalist and victims advocate Nina Fenel and news.

com.

au.

Laura Jane and Haley were just two of Tuck’s victims.

This is their story.

LJ, Haley, thank you for joining me on True Crime Conversations.

You told your story publicly for the first time just last year.

Can you tell us about why and how you made that decision and what it’s been like since sharing your your story? Um, we made the decision to come forward in the media because we had not been able to say our abusers’s name um for over 20 years.

Um, Haley and I had many discussions about the fact that he’d never been named publicly in the media and we decided that it was time we wanted to reclaim our story.

And part of that was naming him um not just for us but for all of his survivors so that they’d never have to um they’d never have to type his name into a Google search and nothing came up >> to even be able to say his name.

You had to go to court, didn’t you? >> We didn’t.

Um the there was some historical suppression orders um which were lost I guess in in decades of no one speaking out um but the journalist that we worked with Nina Fenel was able to navigate that and realize that you know they were no longer in place.

>> What has it meant to be able to say the name David Tuck publicly? Has it made the difference that you were hoping being able to say his name? >> Definitely.

I think since we did our first article around 12 months ago, we’ve connected with numerous other victim survivors and this is not just from the child care and the experience that we had, but previous victim survivors of his as well.

And I think that’s huge for LJ and I growing up.

I mean, I know myself definitely tried to at least read about or understand my own story and understand if there were others involved and it was not possible.

So, I think the closure that’s hopefully given to others who maybe don’t want to speak out um themselves, but at least can understand that they’re not alone and there are others that are supporting them and understand what happened with the child care, what happened um you know with him committing suicide.

These are all things that unless you were remained in the small town or with a con connection in that small town, that information just was not available to the wider community um or to the remainder of his, you know, victims.

>> Why why was none of that online? as far as we can tell, um, and I guess from speaking to Chris Graham, who was the editor of the local newspaper at the time, is that essentially the the council played a significant role in ensuring that he name wasn’t mentioned in the paper and he wasn’t publicly identified.

As to why, I can’t tell you exactly, but I can tell you that it caused a lot of harm.

Um, and it meant that many victim survivors potentially up until last year didn’t even know that he was dead.

>> There’s not even photos, is there? There’s not like a a recognizable photo of him.

>> That photo um that you see in the newspaper is a photo that I happen to stumble across in my not even my mother, my grandmother’s photo albums.

And it’s just one random photo with him in the background.

And we’ve not only us but current affair and Nina Fenel searched high and low and we have still not been able to locate a photo of him >> to explain to listeners.

It’s a photo of of of LJ in in the foreground and then in the background there’s a boat and he’s in it and it it’s it’s not even his face.

It’s kind of the back of him and almost a side profile, but you you can’t see anything.

>> He’s literally in the background as far as you can go.

Like he’s just a tiny little like blur on a boat really.

And that’s the only photo you can find.

>> Well, yeah.

And let’s put it this way.

We are aware of close family, friends.

We are aware of family members that we personally, as well as others assisting us, have reached out to directly that will not share photos of him.

Um, the police department will not release any mug shot of him.

Now, he was charged with crime, so you know, there must be mug shots that exist.

uh there is a large group of people still protecting his identity for some reason uh to this day.

The mind boggles as to why we are protecting this person.

>> And I think it’s just there’s no understanding maybe from the families as to why we need this picture now.

But you know, I guess to make it clear, not every one of his victim survivors will have known his name >> or his full name.

Now, putting that image out there and we know that he abused children as young as two years old.

Now, that putting his face out there and connecting it with his name once again gives every one of his victims that opportunity to go, “Oh my goodness, that is the man that is the man that harmed me.

” And they can then from there understand that, you know, he is dead.

We have named him and identified him.

It’s just I think for us that really big missing piece of the puzzle >> is showing everyone what this guy looked like.

>> We had a victim survivor reach out and she told me that every year around the same time she would do a search.

She didn’t have like a name, she just had a few like key identifiers.

Um, and every year she would try and find out details and then because the first article came out, she was able to do her annual search and have a name.

Wow.

>> And a lot of this um was for me that’s what it was like when I was 18.

I went back to Baitman’s Bay to try and find an information to meet with other victim survivors.

Um it was from there that I was able to get like newspaper cli clippings and start to understand the extent one of the abuse um and the amount of victims but two just how um hidden this had all been and like the by not him not being named and there being no photos and no discussions.

This sort of just disappeared.

He just disappeared from the face of the earth.

And know we’ve had victim survivors that have come forward that are as old as my parents.

So he’s been doing this a really long time.

Um, and that’s why, you know, ultimately his name being the media is so important because even if those people don’t come forward, they might have a tiny sense of closure and know that there is indeed people out there fighting for justice for all of David Tuck’s victim survivors.

>> Let’s go back to the start and tell your story.

When did you both start going to this daycare and and how much care were were you in? Were you there multiple days a week, multiple nights a week? What did the care kind of look like? >> I was seven, so I was there quite a lot.

My mom was a shift shift worker, so I spent a lot of time there after school, before school, on the weekends, and in the evenings.

>> And do you remember what it looked like, what the property looked like? What the house looked like? >> Yeah, I do.

Um I remember it like I was there yesterday.

And also when I’ve made trips back to Baitman’s Bay, I’ve I’ve driven out to the property just to make sure it was real.

Um but yeah, I can remember exactly what it was like to walk up to the front stairs where the rooms were, where the bathroom was, um the backyard looked like.

And I think the thing that stuck with me and Haley and I have had this conversation is just how small it was.

Last year, Haley was able to find some photos on real estate.

com of the property and it was just so small.

And it’s crazy to me that any type of regulatory body walked into that place and said this is a suitable place for 12 12 or more children.

>> 12 or more kids.

That’s how many were there at a time.

Well, he this is I guess um part of the information we’re going to have to find out is he wasn’t meant to have that many children there at at any one time, but uh any person who was attending the center, whether a parent or somebody that was doing checks or, you know, the children themselves knew that on quite a number of occasions, uh he was frequently over the allowable numbers of children he was meant to have in his care.

Um, you know, even the property itself, the house was tiny.

You know, one single bathroom, two very small rooms, not enough beds for the children that were staying overnight, but also a very large dam that was completely unfenced >> on the property that uh, at least one child that I know of fell into.

Thankfully, was pulled out, you know, without any harm.

But to LJ’s point, it the property itself was not something that should ever have been approved to allow children in a care facility to be attending.

It wasn’t a safe property, let alone the man running it being a safe person.

>> Do you remember on the surface when you first went, was it fun? Was there activities? What was the pull >> for me? Um, I had gone to a couple of different primary schools in Baitman Bay.

So, there were kids I went to school with and you know, like there were familiar faces, there were so many kids.

The yard was big, there were toys, there was TV, we could watch whatever movies we wanted.

I remember we would watch like Titanic and there was another movie I can’t Greece you know and I didn’t have a VCR at home so being able to sit and watch those things and have access to things that I might not have had was was a big pull you know and it’s not like back then you know center daycare was really unaffordable and family daycare was was a preferred option particularly in small towns so when you walked in and you seen all of these other kids, people that you know, children that you recognized.

There was no reason to think even for a moment that it was unsafe >> and it was a necessity I guess you know for most all families there it was low-income families um with multiple children typically and they were working so you know similar to LJ would be shift working or you know hospitality workers that needed that extended hours care that was being offered uh rather than your standard after school care um you around and your sort of daytime child care.

That was that was the necessity for both most families that were attending the center, >> which even nowadays is hard to find to find kind of affordable child care for evenings and weekends and and those kinds of hours, you know, it’s it is hard to find in Australia.

>> It’s basically non-existent.

I mean, uh, my partner and I were looking at, you know, getting a babysitter for for a night out, you know, to go to the movies or at show or dinner, and it’s $300, you know, >> $300 a, >> you know, you’re getting a private nanny or you’re getting a private person who’s charging you $30, $40 an hour.

So, if it’s not affordable now, it absolutely was not affordable then.

So anywhere that offered after hours care that you could use a childare rebate for um you know of course people are going to use that service.

He was also well regarded in the community.

He was registered with the council when you look at some of the like flyers and things like that.

You know it is was promoted as this really safe familyfriendly inclusive space for children.

Did the grooming start pretty quickly? >> For me, it was instant in instantaneously from the first time I ever walked in that place.

>> After the break, LJ and Haley share what the overnight childcare center was like and how they felt when they first arrived there as children.

What did it look like? What What was the first time you walked into that place like? Um there was lots of affection, lots of toys, lots of you’re so special.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Um you know, identifying I guess uh vulnerabilities and then being able to like weaponize that vulnerability against you.

um particularly if say there was any like issues at home or you know if there was uh like poverty or anything like that he was really able to fill those gaps and create that trust and because there were so many kids you know when you seen like another kid sitting on his lap it wasn’t like it was just a normalized behavior and you know what I reflect on now is that the he didn’t just groom the kids he groomed the parents um because it was like oh come in for that cup of tea or like you know it became very friendly ly um almost like a community within itself.

>> Can you tell me about the odd rules that he had and he enforced on the kids? >> Yeah, he he had um some rules which I mean we’ve actually found in writing uh since our investigation started.

Some being for parents that they had to knock before entering, had to allow time.

Um, now if you compare that to a modern facility for child care, I mean you want to walk in and collect your child, you walk in and collect your child.

Um, but in terms of rules, there was for the children and these were of course kept from the parents, but you weren’t meant to wear underwear to bed.

Um, there essentially was a child each night that would sleep in his bed.

Um, and you know, I mean, yeah, they’re probably the most significant ones.

>> Normally, too, like for me, you know, I’d be getting dropped to school and he’d be like, “Oh, you look really sick.

You have to stay home.

” And that was a common occurrence as well for children.

Like there’d just always be one sick kid that that had to stay home, particularly if they’re of school age.

We have access to some correspondence between organizations, government organizations that was raising that as an issue uh between the organizations and he was given warnings essentially that that wasn’t appropriate behavior.

Um, nothing further was addressed or done by council when they were made aware that the government funded child career was having children sleep in his bed.

I mean, you would think that’s an immediate reason to shut down the center.

>> Yeah.

>> And that in the end was not even the reason that he was shut down for.

In the end, he was shut down for fraud.

and he that meant he was then allowed to move to a different state and continue essentially you know exposing himself to children.

I at that point was harmed again.

Um because our parents were never notified that hey these are allegations that had been raised.

Um you know he called my parents and said well you know listen I’ve stopped doing the child care.

It was something to do with fraud.

And then we went to go and have a visit, which it’s like had he had my family been notified, obviously at that point you cut ties, but no families were given that opportunity because, you know, in my opinion, it was swept under the rug.

>> How soon after you both started going did the abuse start? >> Mine was in like the second or third time that I attended.

>> Haley, do you remember? Cuz you were so young.

Yeah, I I was only 5 years old when I started at the center and it was the first time that I was chosen to sleep in the bed essentially.

Um, which was again, you know, fairly immediate to starting at the center.

>> And then the abuse in terms of frequency once he had started, was it every time you guys went? >> For me, yes, >> it was very often.

Um, as LJ said, it, you know, it’s almost like he picked a child.

he got to pick, you know.

Um, so it was definitely very frequent, particularly when most children were attending the center three to four times a week.

It would be at least once a week.

>> Do either of you or both of you remember how it made you feel? >> I don’t think I knew it was happening, but I knew it was wrong.

>> Yeah.

>> I think I also realized it was happening to other children.

So then I was confused about whether or not it was normal.

Obviously, there are, you know, physical responses such as like pain, uncomfortability, all of those things.

But for me, I just don’t think I knew what was happening other than it I didn’t want it to happen.

And you know, he was good at the manipulation, I guess, on ensuring that you didn’t tell.

And he himself normalized the behavior by being like, I love you so much.

This is what love is.

You’re my favorite.

All of that kind of typical sex offender behavior.

>> Were Were there threats involved? How did he kind of keep this up without >> I’m part of a bigger sibling group.

So he was like, you know, if you tell anyone like your mom’s going to get in trouble and then you will like get taken away from her and you won’t see your siblings again.

>> Yeah.

I mean, for me it was more uh you’re going to get in trouble, you know, this because you do you feel like it’s your fault or like you you know it’s something wrong.

you don’t know how to um express it or you don’t really understand what’s going on.

But if you when you’re told this is your fault, you’re bad.

You’re going to get in trouble if you tell anyone.

Um you know, at 5 years old, that obviously puts a lot of pressure on a child and causes a lot of confusion.

Um so ultimately yeah you just stay quiet because you don’t know you don’t have the ability to sort of weigh up the risks or understand that >> even the language like what do you say I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway >> and even and in the ‘ 90s I mean I’m a ‘9s baby too we weren’t really taught consent as a as a kid and and our bodies being ours or any of that kind of language that we use now >> I think the best was like that life that you know that giraffe.

I think I learned some stuff from there.

>> Healthy Harold.

>> Yeah, healthy Harold.

I think that was the best I got really.

>> Not one understanding what’s going on and two not understanding where there’s safe people.

You can tell that’s something that has really improved over time.

I mean, it’s, you know, we can still do better, but definitely as a child, like you said, in the ‘ 90s, you were told to do what adults said.

>> You did.

And if an adult said, “You can’t tell anyone this.

” Um, and you’re going to be in big trouble.

Uh, particularly when you come from a home that maybe isn’t as loving and supportive, then you absolutely don’t want to get in trouble.

So, you don’t tell anyone.

>> Did either of you try and tell anyone? Try and talk to your parents? >> No.

>> I do remember sort of one occasion where, you know, I was so close to disclosing.

was on the tip of my tongue and unfortunately at the time you know the person I was trying to disclose to was really busy and you know sort of by the time I got their attention they were a bit snappy of like you know what is it I’m in the middle of something and then you know I just withdrew and couldn’t get it out of my mouth but that was a very uh distinct memory that I have because it was at the point where I needed it to stop.

My situation is pretty similar.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table and I had gotten in trouble for something maybe at school and I remember my mom being like, you know, what is wrong with you kind of thing and I was so close to saying something, but I remember just like hearing his voice in my head, you know, basically being like, you’ll lose everything and it’ll be your fault.

So, I just didn’t say anything.

Because were there signs that you know in hindsight your parents if they had been looking might have noticed socially kind of mentally behaviorally that you you guys were doing that that kind of showed what was happening.

>> Oh 100%.

I look back now and think you know I was a very withdrawn child.

I was very emotionally um underdeveloped I would say.

So even sort of in your later primary years would um sulk let’s say or you know we called it sulking um I could never appropriately express emotions it would be you know something’s happened I didn’t like and I would just completely withdraw um things like bed wedding um was very consistent you know well beyond the years that um it was age appropriate and you know sexualized behavior Um I think you know these are all really really big indicators that again with education and understanding what they look like 100% um they were there but of course you know we were not in situations where um our parents were familiar with those signs.

>> I spent a lot of time struggling at school into fights at school not being able to maintain friendships.

Um I also left school in year 9 as a result of the abuse that I experienced.

But, you know, I think even up until he committed suicide, I think there are lots of behaviors that um if we were to look at it now would have would have raised concerns or should have raised concerns.

>> How long did the abuse go for? How long were you attending this daycare? >> The last time I was abused by him, I was 11.

I think 11 or 12.

I think 11 probably.

>> So, four four years.

>> Yeah.

That’s a long time to to be enduring this.

>> Yeah.

>> You mentioned, Haley, that you know, he got eventually shut down from fraud, but there were also a number of assault allegations while you were there that didn’t get him shut down, weren’t there? >> Exactly.

Right.

And I think um a lot more education needs to happen with the public in terms of what the process is when a child makes an allegation and the huge gap required to actually criminally charge and convict that person.

Um I think there’s a really big misconception that if someone is charged but not convicted that they’re innocent.

and David Tuck had allegations against him and charges against him before he ever even opened the childcare center and he was not convicted of those.

And we can tell you right now as we know who the original accuser was that that 100% happened and had that child been believed and had he been criminally charged, you’re talking dozens of children would have been protected from this man.

So I think a really key point is we need to believe children and we need to understand that not getting a conviction does not mean that they didn’t commit the crime when we’re talking about child predators.

You know because unfortunately expecting a you know 5 6 7 8 child to sit on a stand and give the amount of testimony needed for a criminal conviction is just you know it’s too much really to burden any child with.

>> We really need to re-evaluate how the system works now.

And I think that, you know, a lot of people read our story and go, “Well, that was then.

” But some of these things, particularly what Haley is saying, are not much different now.

>> It’s still harder than people think to have someone convicted of child sexual abuse.

And the younger the victim, the harder it is.

They’re relying on things like medical evidence and other forms of evidence that isn’t always possible to collect.

And, you know, I think it stands like children don’t lie about being abused.

the statistical relevance is so unrelevant that it’s it’s not even worth mentioning.

They might they might be confused or misidentify who, but their children don’t lie about being abused.

>> He went to trial for the charges you’re talking about in 1991.

So, it was 10 counts of child abuse against an 11year-old girl, found not guilty, and then by 1994 he had a he had a daycare.

So that means he passed police checks, working with children checks.

When you found that out that this man had these charges and then went on to abuse you in this setting.

How did that feel? I mean, it makes you angry, of course, and I think that’s a huge part of why LJ and I started speaking publicly about this and why we genuinely want to make changes in how people think about pedophiles or who they think a pedophile is.

Um, because someone this significant can slip through the cracks and just reaffend and reaffend.

um you know, you’ve got to say, “Okay, there must have been signs and we’re telling you, yeah, there was plenty of signs, but no individual took responsibility for putting up those flags.

You know, it’s very much um turn a blind eye.

” And a lot of people think, “Oh, well, that was the ’90s and this is now.

” As LJ said, well, we’ve had three major childc care sexual abuse cases in the last handful of years.

>> This is exactly the same.

and they use the exact same tactics.

Move states so they’re not traceable.

You know, as soon as there’s a complaint, move shift.

Um, and you know, it’s a lot easier for child care services to move someone along then raise the red flags and really in the end it’s everyone’s trying to protect their own business or themselves and it’s not the right way to go about it.

I mean protecting the children should be the number one priority.

And whilst there wasn’t um working with children check cards that look the way they look today back then, there was still required checks, there was still police checks, there were still reviews that needed to be done in order to have someone um be allowed to work with children.

And we need to ask, you know, for our case, what happened? How was this missed? but also acknowledge that in current day when we look at those three particular cases um within the childcare sector all of those people have working with children’s checks.

So where is the gap there? You know my I’m of the opinion rule of working with children’s check only works if you’ve been caught for something right? If you’ve never been caught, >> how are the people that you work with? >> Looking at behavior, looking at concerns, looking at gut feelings and what are they doing about that? You know, uh, one of the things that we’ve been advocating for is required training.

So that when people get a working with children’s check, they have to do training.

And some people say, “Oh, well, what’s training going to do?” It’s not about stopping the perpetrator.

It’s about the people working in these spaces having the ability to know the language, know what to look out for, know how to report, and have the confidence so that they can report because it’s not like it’s not just about like catching the predator oneonone.

It’s about child child prevention and the prevention of child sexual abuse being an everyone problem and an everyone issue.

And we all have a role to play in that >> cuz it’s almost like that working with children check would lull parents into this false sense of security.

Right.

>> That’s right.

It’s like um LJ said before, even looking for a private nanny or a private babysitter, first thing most parents are asking for is a working with children’s check.

>> My opinion, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

You can go online and you can apply for working in a children’s check and provided you haven’t been criminally charged.

You can have one.

Now, to get your driver’s license, you need to do a test.

To get your responsible service of alcohol, you have to do a test.

Why is it we are putting children in the care of somebody who has no form of qualification? Essentially, the only requirement is they haven’t been caught doing something wrong.

Uh I think that’s the biggest issue is understanding that uh working with children check it does not make them a safe person and there are multiple other things you need to be looking out for.

I’m confused how Tuck got a working with children check if he did have charges.

Is it because he was found not guilty? >> So are we.

It’s unclear to be honest.

It’s actually unclear.

There was some change in legislation um in the early ‘9s that sort of looks similar to like the modern day spent conviction schemes.

I I don’t know enough to speak on it, but I understand that there was some legislation change which may have allowed him somehow to slip through the gap, but at the end of the day, it’s not good enough.

I mean, like they weren’t it wasn’t like he did a break and enter or something.

He accused of abusing children.

He should never ever been put in a position where he was working with children.

Unfortunately, the daycare isn’t the only role that he had after those charges occurred >> cuz he worked with children across his whole career.

>> Yeah.

Youth detention, um, worked with children with disabilities.

He worked in a hospital, he was a bus driver, he was a scouts leader.

So, his entire adult life he worked with children.

>> The last figure I saw was that there were potentially 55 victims.

Do you think that there could be more than that? Well, that’s just of the child care.

That’s the um that’s just the childare number that that’s assumed, but I would say there were would be hundreds of victims.

>> Oh, definitely.