Incest case just one in litany of horrors

CANBERRA - The Victorian Government has launched urgent investigations into failures in its child protection system that have allowed predators appalling access to young victims.

The revelation that a man was able to keep his daughter a virtual prisoner while raping her daily for 30 years and fathering four children despite being known to welfare authorities is only one among a litany of horrors.

Others - including the case of a child being handed to a convicted sex offender by government officials - have been disclosed in a report by state Ombudsman George Brouwer.

"I am concerned about the Department of Human Services' ability to discharge its statutory responsibilities towards children at significant risk," Brouwer said.

He is now investigating the department's child protection programme.

State Community Services Minister Lisa Neville yesterday announced an audit of every child in care, after accepting that the government was at fault.

"Children should not be put in any situation that puts them at risk," she said. "The department has failed in that duty."

Premier John Brumby also promised new policies to protect children.

But the nation has been rocked by cases led by "Australia's Josef Fritzl", the LaTrobe Valley father who began raping his daughter at age 11 and continued for three decades.

Fritzl is the Austrian who imprisoned his daughter in an underground dungeon for 24 years, fathering seven children with her before being exposed and detained for life in a mental institution.

The Victorian case surfaced after the victim finally complained to police and DNA evidence allegedly confirmed the parentage of her children.

Although the father was charged in February, the details became known only yesterday after an investigation by Melbourne's Herald Sun that claimed the family had been known to welfare authorities for more than 30 years, and that police had known of the incest since 2005.

Police did not lay charges because the victim was terrified of her father and refused to co-operate. She later changed her mind and she and her children are now in care.

The Herald Sun said the father began raping his daughter "almost daily" in the 1970s, ensuring her silence by threats of violence against her mother and siblings, and by rarely allowing her outside the home.

One of the four children he fathered died soon after birth, and the remaining three have health problems.

The case poses disturbing questions, including the claims of the man's wife that she had never suspected the incest despite living in the same house for more than a decade, and neighbours who were suspicious but considered it none of their business.

The children were all born at major hospitals without the name of the father being recorded on birth certificates and without raising questions, and welfare authorities had not intervened at any stage despite their long history with the family.

The man, in his 60s, has been charged with offences including incest, rape and indecent assault, and will appear in court in November.

Neville promised an immediate investigation into the alleged failure of her department to act.

The Ombudsman's report gave further disturbing examples, including:

* A child placed with a convicted sex offender, against whom the child had made earlier disclosures of abuse and despite repeated complaints by the child's mother.

* The failure of officials to act on reports that two boys, aged 5 and 6, were living with a convicted sex offender until after they had been taken to an "unknown location". They were finally tracked down and taken into care.

* The failure of the department to intervene and protect a 14-year-old girl with a known history of sexual abuse and self-harm, who gave birth to a baby boy.

Brouwer said the department at times failed to act until complaints were made to his office, and legal requirements such as "best interest case plans" were at times not met.

In one region 11 per cent of children under protection orders were without plans, and in others vulnerable children had not been allocated case workers.

Brouwer said cases were being overlooked in a system operating under stress. Many cases suggested that as resources were stretched, the threshold for intervention increased, which seemed to delay or prevent the investigation of serious allegations.