Childcare workers’ digital lives under scrutiny as firm offers dark web screening after horror abuse scandals

Educators could face digital footprint and dark web screening under a provocative new vetting push in the wake of horror child abuse scandals that exposed catastrophic failures in childcare safeguarding systems.

A private investigations firm is pitching a new child-safety vetting service that goes beyond Working With Children Checks and police checks by scrutinising a person’s online life, social media activity, compromised data, dark web exposure and behavioural patterns.

Hunterwhite Recoveries and Investigations director Darren Whiteman says the current recruitment screening system remains too focused on historical offending and not enough on identifying emerging behavioural risk.

His firm’s new service Hunterwhite Safeguard — targeted at the childcare industry — combines identity verification, digital footprint analysis, dark web intelligence and behavioural risk reporting for childcare operators, recruiters and insurers.

Mr Whiteman said WWCCs and police checks do not go far enough because they cannot reliably identify emerging behavioural risk before harm occurs.

“Those checks cover probably 30 per cent. We cover probably 60 per cent and there’s still that 10 per cent that is impossible to know,” he said.

“No one’s ever going to give you 100 per cent accuracy to say ‘this person’s clean’.

“But we can see what’s happening with this person now, not just what has happened before.”

Mr Whiteman said the service was not designed to replace WWCCs or police checks, but to add another layer of screening. Candidates must consent before checks are undertaken.

A report is then prepared for the recruiter which categorises candidates as low, monitor, elevated or high risk.

“If someone refuses and says they don’t want this vetting done, then generally, that’s a red flag and could potentially indicate they are hiding something,” Mr Whiteman said.

“We actually tell them exactly what we’re going to be looking at. We are not hiding it.”

The Safeguard service has emerged as Australia’s childcare sector reels from abuse scandals, a damning Senate inquiry, sweeping new recruitment laws and collapsing family confidence following the Joshua Dale Brown allegations.

In March, the Senate Committee’s inquiry into the quality and safety of Australia’s early childhood education and care system found existing safeguards were not enough and called for stronger pre-employment screening, better intelligence sharing and closer links between WWCC systems, the National Educator Register and police and regulator intelligence.

The inquiry also called for mechanisms allowing regular two-way feedback between police and regulators on “sub-threshold matters”.

Mr Whiteman said “sub-threshold” behaviour could include lawful conduct that, when seen as a pattern, raised concern and was exactly the type of risk his service was designed to identify.

He gave the example of a person repeatedly taking photographs in public places where children appeared in the images.

“It’s not against the law. You can go anywhere and take a photo, right? But there would be a bit of a pattern there. And unless you are looking for that pattern, you will completely miss it,” he said.

The Senate committee inquiry followed a series of horrific abuse cases, including the allegations against Brown, who is facing more than 150 charges relating to alleged offending against children across 20 Melbourne childcare centres and Ashley Paul Griffith, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to 309 offences against 73 victims.

Griffith abused children at childcare centres in Brisbane and Italy for almost two decades before police traced clues in child abuse material shared online.

Mr Whiteman said dark web screening was one of the most serious elements of the new service.

“We tell them we’re going to jump on the dark web and do some intelligence screening on there. And if you’re there, the chances are, we will find you,” he said.

But he acknowledged that predators often deliberately hide behind layers of anonymity, using aliases, disposable email addresses, encrypted platforms and separate online identities to distance their real names from illegal material or suspicious networks.

“That can be very difficult, but most emails can be traced back to something,” he said.

“There’s always a link to that person. It can take us quite a while to find it.

“There are a few layers that we’ve got to pull back to get in there and see it, and we’re never going to see everything.”

The company says any dark web discovery linked to child safety would likely be treated as serious.

“Anything that pops up on the dark web is a red flag,” Mr Whiteman said.

“That’s almost always elevated risk and high risk.

“They’re almost to the point where we now hand this information over to the authorities, because we actually have a legal obligation.”

Last month G8 Education announced it would close about 40 centres following the allegations against Brown, who worked at four G8 centres.

The group’s chief executive Pejman Okhovat told shareholders “serious incidents reported nationally” had led to heightened scrutiny and affected family confidence and trust across Australia.

Mr Whiteman said that kind of employment movement would immediately trigger questions under an enhanced vetting model.

“We certainly would have identified the first red flag, which was this guy had been at 20 facilities,” he said.

But Early Childhood Australia chief executive Sam Page said while screening tools were important, the priority should be strengthening public systems rather than layering private services onto already stretched providers.

“I prefer screening tools that are publicly managed and not adding another layer of cost and administrative burden on services,” she said.

“We should invest in robust public systems everyone can use.”

Ms Page warned against creating a fragmented system where individual operators were left deciding which private vetting products to trust.

“We shouldn’t be relying on someone actually being convicted of a criminal offence,” she said.

“We should be made aware of concerning behaviour that might have been reported by co-workers or employers, as well as police or other authorities.”

Ms Page said the challenge was balancing stronger safeguarding with fairness, privacy and practical recruitment realities across a sector employing hundreds of thousands of workers.

LegalVision privacy practice leader Phoebe Chester said employers could lawfully use enhanced screening in some circumstances, but warned the privacy risks were significant.

“Enhanced digital vetting is different because it goes beyond statutory checks,” she said.

“Open-source intelligence and dark web data are notoriously unreliable, often containing misidentified individuals, fake profiles, or manipulated data.”

She warned employers could also collect sensitive information unrelated to child safety.

“A social media profile may reveal a candidate’s health, religion, family status, sexuality, political views, union activity or lawful private conduct,” she said.

“Once an employer sees that material, it can be difficult to prove it did not influence the hiring decision.”

Ms Chester said false positives were one of the biggest practical risks.

“Digital searches can misidentify people with the same name, misread sarcasm, treat old material as current or confuse a victim of a data breach with someone involved in wrongdoing,” she said.

“Dark web results can be particularly misleading if they show exposed credentials rather than misconduct.

“Employers should not act on a screening report without checking the source, date, context and relevance.”

LegalVision employment practice group leader Joel Hayden said refusing consent to digital vetting could affect a hiring decision.

“The mistake would be treating refusal as an automatic red flag,” he said.

“Employers should ask why consent was refused, consider whether alternative checks are available.

“If the refusal is linked to a protected attribute, such as disability, religion, an irrelevant criminal record or political opinion, the employer could face discrimination or general protections issues.”

He said Australia’s laws were still catching up with “predictive digital screening”.

“Enhanced vetting should be treated as one layer of child safety, not a substitute for proper supervision, reference checks, complaints handling, incident reporting and workplace culture,” he said.

“The lesson from recent childcare cases is that screening at the door will never be enough if employers do not keep watching for patterns once someone is employed.”