Deny ped op as sports
Advocate revives call to end sex offender ’export’
CHILD protection advocate Allison Ritchie has resurrected her calls for convicted pedophiles to be stripped of their passports.
The former Labor politician, and president of Tasmanian organisation People Protecting Children (PPC), says changes to legislation are needed nationally that prevent overseas tourism for the purpose of child sexual abuse.
She also says alleged child sex offenders should be prevented from travelling overseas in case they abscond and never face court.
But Greg Barns SC, Australian Lawyers Alliance national criminal justice spokesman, said removing passports wasn’t necessary as laws were already in place preventing convicted offenders from overseas travel.
He said amendments to federal laws in 2017 prevented anyone on a child protection register with current reporting obligations from travelling overseas without permission.
“Under amendments to commonwealth legislation … it is an offence to travel overseas without permission from the authority responsible for the register, (which) in Tasmania (is) the Commissioner of Police,” he said.
Mr Barns also disagreed with Ms Ritchie’s calls to remove passports from people facing allegations of child sex offences.
“To suggest, as Ms Ritchie does, that a person who has not been convicted of a sex offence should have their passport removed of course breaches the presumption of innocence, and ignores the fact that a condition of bail is commonly that a person either surrenders their passport and/ or has to keep away from points of departure ,” he said.
The passport removal campaign has been a passion project for Ms Ritchie for some years, having petitioned a number of state and federal Attorneys-General since first contacting Nicola Roxon in 2012.
“I do feel very strongly that we have an important role to play in the international community that we minimise our export of pedophiles,” she said.
“Australia has the unfortunate reputation of reporting pedophiles where they go overseas and abuse children while they are travelling, and indeed that is the main purpose for them travelling… and they have the funds to do that and to minimise, of course, ever being caught.”
Ms Ritchie recently sent a letter to federal Attorney-General Christian Porter calling for removal of passports from convicted and alleged pedophiles.