THE CIDER HOUSE
TASKFORCE Child Protection Week will be held from 4 to 10 September this year. To raise awareness of the plight of vulnerable children, Police Life looks at a taskforce set up to investigate at-risk youths and how it has improved the way police deal with victims with cognitive impairments. In 2013 investigators working at the Dandenong Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team (SOCIT) noticed a pattern of teenagers within state care being exploited. Troubled missing teens were being found in Dandenong, despite not living there, and some were telling their carers stories of sexual exploitation featuring the same children and various houses in the area. The jobs became quite complex and were eventually referred to the Sex Crimes Squad. From here Cider House Taskforce was set up and became a joint investigation between Dandenong SOCIT members, Sex Crimes detectives, child protection workers and staff from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Sergeant Holly Dalrymple was part of the taskforce and said the investigations were about so much more than just prosecuting offenders. “We had some very, very vulnerable victims, kids who had been offended against so often in their lives, they failed to even identify they were victims,” she said. “A lot of them had various cognitive impairments and we had to adapt our investigation techniques and use more tailored methods that would work with such vulnerable victims.” Sgt Dalrymple said most of the offending started on social media.
“For these kids, Facebook is a primary social outlet, they can sit there when they are alone and still socialise,” she said. “On the other end we had a group of men working in low-income jobs, who live in share houses and their only social outlet is also Facebook and other social media. They send out friend requests until someone accepts them and they then go through all their friends and request them as well. “As soon as they hear that ‘ping’ that they have been accepted, they will start messaging the girls, things like ‘you are beautiful, do you want alcohol? I can buy you alcohol’.” From there the grooming and offending happened quickly. “Sometimes they would just be taken to a place they didn’t know and blackmailed into sexual acts, other times the men would throw parties and encourage the girls to bring friends, ply them with alcohol and then sexually assault them,” Sgt Dalrymple said. The first aim of the investigation was to ascertain what had happened and then start to build a rapport and trust with the victims. “While it took a while for the victims to start to open up to us, in the background we were able to use a number of techniques to disrupt the offending,” Sgt Dalrymple said. “We were also teaching the victims, boys and girls, about grooming, about how these men might tell them they love them, but that it was unsafe to hang around these people. “This was the beginning of the end of the cycle of offending, with many of the victims starting to cut ties with these guys. Mostly the kids were simply craving the connection and affection that the predators showed them, right before they were offended against.” Cider House investigators also worked closely with Centre Against Sexual Assault (CASA) outreach workers.
“This relationship was fantastic,” Sgt Dalrymple said. “A lot of our victims would never have reached out to get counselling because, like I’ve mentioned, they didn’t necessarily see themselves as victims. But with the CASA staff working side by side with us, they got this specialist assistance.” Cider House detectives arrested 28 men, charging six with crimes ranging from assault to rape. Charges were also filed against a seventh, but he was deported. Farhan Rezaie pleaded guilty to one count of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and multiple charges relating to online grooming. He received 2½ years’ imprisonment. Douglas Stillman pleaded guilty to one count of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and received a community corrections order. Police also issued 15 harbouring notices and served 18 intervention orders designed to keep the offenders away from the children. While Cider House is no longer operating, the information and lessons learned will continue to be taught to police across Victoria Police. “We learnt that this issue is widespread and that by actively engaging with DHHS and other stakeholders we can learn so much about building trust and rapport with some of the state’s most vulnerable victims. These kids are amazing and they deserve our most thorough and committed response to these investigations,” Sgt Dalrymple said. Victoria Police investigators are now running presentations and training across the state, specifically about the child exploitation investigation. “In addition, a state-wide policy is being created and will be introduced to ensure the way we deal with this type of offending and these victims is best practice.”
Editorial: Janae Houghton POLICE LIFE | SPRING 2016
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