Police vetting under fire
The High Court has ruled police were wrong to release sexual allegations about a young man wanting to be a volunteer firefighter.
The man in his early 20s, who has permanent name suppression, applied to be a Fire Service volunteer in June 2014 and consented to police disclosing information about him to the service.
The police database contained allegations of low-level sexual touching of his female cousins when he was 11 and 14 and they were 6 or 7. He was never charged.
The police’s Vetting Review Panel decided the offending had ‘‘probably’’ occurred and, although not clear the information was relevant to the volunteer firefighting position, decided to leave that assessment to the Fire Service and released the material.
Justice Rachel Dunningham ruled the decision was wrong because the panel should have decided the question of relevance itself. ‘‘Given the [Police] Vetting Service’s conclusions that the incidents occurred when the applicant was a youth, they involved relatively low level offending, and he was now an adult with no further known offending of that nature, it was important that it was satisfied there was a relevant risk, rather than leave it to the Fire Service,’’ she said.
The decision revealed the Police Vetting Service, which has
29 staff, handled more than
630,000 vetting applications last year. About 2 per cent involved the potential release of nonconviction details. These were dealt with at a higher level and .05 per cent were referred to a Vetting Review Panel staffed by four or five senior police staff.
‘‘Police will sometimes have information that does not relate to criminal offending, or which has not been tested by the Court or otherwise independently verified and that material can be very prejudicial to the individual
concerned,’’ Justice Dunningham said.
The man’s file showed police received a complaint from his
16-year-old cousin in November
2013, alleging indecent touching when he was 11 to 12 years old and she was 6 or 7. Her 13-year-old sister soon after made a complaint of similar offending when he was 14.
Police conducted evidential interviews of the complainants and interviewed the man who denied the allegations. They wanted to charge him, but the complainants did not want to go ahead. Before he knew the girls had decided they did not want him charged, the man signed a consent authorising police to disclose information it held about him to the Fire Service and to the foster home agency Open Home Foundation.
Justice Dunningham said the panel had rightly assured itself the allegations were sufficiently supported and it was entitled to release material even if a conviction had not resulted. The further test was whether the information was relevant. Since the panel had not reached a clear view on the relevance of the allegations, it should also have given the man a chance to be heard on the release of the information, she said.