From The Point: The human cost of the Reportable Conduct crisis

Your newspaper The Point is hitting letterboxes as we speak. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing cherry-picked highlights from the publication online. You can also view the full publication at: https://www.ieuvictas.org.au/member-publications

The human cost of the RCS

“I was totally destroyed. This will not go away unless it is fixed; it will destroy other people…”

Chris* is a highly respected veteran educator who has worked for decades as a teacher, vice principal and Principal. They were the victim of “completely fanciful” accusations which became a Reportable Conduct charge that dragged on for nearly 12 months.

Despite being completely exonerated – “totally innocent, no case to answer” – Chris feels shattered by the experience. It was “a debacle…  involving completely utterly false claims” that ruined their life.

They are now on prescription medication to sleep and deal with the “dark places’ the ordeal has taken them. They lost their their part-time job; they lost money; they lost a voluntary role dispensing priceless free mentorship to a needy school.

They lost their health.

“I held on to my reputation very strongly; I feel now that it is just totally wrecked. It was heartbreaking. I’m anxious, I’m sad. My blood pressure has gone through the roof. I just really lack confidence, I lack self-esteem. I don’t want to go to social occasions, I force myself because of my partner…”

“I’m not one to rush into a bushfire in a nylon shirt, I’ve dealt with a lot of difficult situations in my time in schools. But this has rocked me. I’m demoralised. I’m bewildered, overwhelmed. I’ve struggled to do simple tasks and I’ve had panic attacks. And so much of it was preventable…”

“I loved teaching and schools were my happy place,” Chris says of their career prior to the allegation.

Chris was a protector of children all their career, all their life.

“I acknowledge and respect the anyone can make an allegation and it must be investigated.”

But Chris was baffled by the allegations, then shocked when they changed during the process.

Chris is also at pains to praise the efforts of the investigator and employer representative. But they say the former was overloaded with cases and the latter was “out of his depth” dealing with the case on top of all his other responsibilities.

In the 1970s, Chris risked it all to report a priest behaving inappropriately with primary school kids. That priest was later jailed for 8 years for sexual offences and is now considered one of the 10 worst offenders in Victorian history, but Chris’s concerns at the time were “completely dismissed”. Chris left that school, and for a time, education.

This latest ordeal brought back all that trauma.

“The whole thing of not being believed, of not being trusted. I thought I’d got over it, but this brought it all back.”

There just isn’t enough care for people in Chris’s position.

They were initially offered a single counselling session. Later, after their distress became too pronounced to be ignored, there were more. But throughout the entire process, Chris – and the IEU – had to continually push to get any information, to get any support.

After an initial three-hour meeting, it was six months before they received the letter clearing their name.

As a result of the investigation, their VIT registration was cancelled, and after three calls over two years, is still not reinstated. At the end of it all, they were asked to keep the case confidential – the IEU said no, that is not necessary.

“I cannot thank the union enough; they were just brilliant. I don’t know how I would have coped without them. I think everyone should be in the union.”

What needs to change

Chris doesn’t want others to go through what they have “for no reason”.

“They’ve got to get it right… they need to work smarter. There has to be a better way…

“It’s too much of a ‘tick the boxes’ process which doesn’t address the problem the way it should.”

Chris knows of two younger people in similar positions. They won’t submit complaints about their treatment because they feel their careers would be jeopardised.

“What about a poor CRT just out of college? They’d be wrecked. They’d have no wage while they were investigated. Their career would be destroyed.”

Chris says employer organisations must get more people to work RCS cases; it will speed up the process and save them money in the long run, because they won’t have teachers on full pay sitting at home while replacements take classes.

“The cost is unbelievable… and the stress it is putting on principals is huge. All these cases are so disruptive to schools and we don’t have enough teachers as it is – to have to pay another person is crazy. I don’t see why my case couldn’t have been handled a lot quicker.

“They need to get the initial allegation right, not change them during the process. They need to hire someone to do the first interview before they are sending out letters charging people and standing them down from teaching.”

Chris says there is also not enough support for the accused.

“I had to research my own support… I was lucky I had someone from the IEU to be my support person.”

More resources are required; more support must be offered to (often totally innocent) educators who are accused; and there needs to be much improved clarity of information about the charges.

Chris also says accused educators need someone qualified at the start of the process to explain the legal framework of the allegations and answer basic legal questions about how it will unfold.

Chris wasn’t even told the identity of their accuser.

When they asked about the long delays in reaching the inevitable verdict, they were told that “procedural fairness” had to be observed.

“Well procedural fairness belongs to me as well – 12 months waiting was not fair.”

“The (employer organisation) is ignoring the elephant in the room. (The RCS process) is ugly, it’s difficult, it’s embarrassing but it will not go away, it will destroy others…”

“It was the worst time in my life, and it was for nothing.”

*Our member’s name has been changed out of respect for their privacy.