YMCA downfall ignited in chance interview
It was supposed to be an interview about a rogue staffer who admitted to child abuse, but developed into a frank admission about the failures of the YMCA's processes.
The week before former YMCA childcare worker and confessed pedophile Jonathan Luke Lord was sentenced in January 2013 for molesting 12 boys between the ages of six and 11, then YMCA state chief executive Phillip Hare agreed to speak to AAP.
He volunteered information that preceded his later resignation and helped spark a damning royal commission investigation into the organisation.
Lord had worked at the YMCA's before-and-after school program in southern Sydney from 2009 to 2011.
Mr Hare and his public relations manager James Ellender invited AAP to their headquarters in Parramatta, in Sydney's west, to discuss Lord's prosecution.
The YMCA was synonymous with the Lord stories but there was no indication yet that the organisation had acted negligently.
"We know that we followed A1 standard processes and what this has highlighted is grooming," Mr Hare said at the start of the interview.
"The fact that somebody can actually groom staff, organisations and parents to get access to children. We think that's what the real story is."
Mr Hare was personable, easygoing and spoke with a sort of quiet confidence about the organisation.
About halfway through the interview Mr Hare was questioned about a rumour heard after Lord's arrest - that he had been dismissed from a previous job as a camp counsellor in the US over allegations of improper behaviour with children.
Mr Hare said Lord told a fellow staff member after his arrest but before his confession that the allegations relating to the YMCA were "like the US, it's all made up".
"Did you get any referees from them (the US employer)," he was asked.
"No, I don't believe so," Mr Hare replied.
Mr Hare said four more times during the interview that the YMCA didn't check candidates' referees.
He went on to say that the YMCA relied on the required police checks to uncover any offences relating to children. Lord's check came back clean.
But Mr Hare agreed with the premise that child molesters were likely to offend long before police ever detected their actions.
Near the end of the interview, he calmly said the YMCA made no error in judgment and its procedures had changed "very little" since Lord's arrest.
The story broke on the day of Lord's sentencing.
The YMCA went into damage control, with Mr Hare later saying he was wrong to assume his organisation did not check references.
However, Australia's largest childcare operator was later forced into a major overhaul of management, policies and practices with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex abuse branding it unsafe for children.
The commission's 165-page report into the YMCA NSW notes the organisation has since accepted the evidence "shows that, in important respects, many of its policies and procedures and their implementation were deficient and required improvement".
In May this year, some 17 months after the interview with AAP, Mr Hare resigned, ending his 24 years with the YMCA, the last seven as its chief executive.
The YMCA this week apologised to the children and families who were Lord's victims and acknowledged its failings to implement child protection procedures.
