Jeanie (00:01)
It helped me to see people rather than behaviours. And it helped me to understand that in order to achieve positive outcomes, you have to be able to work with people that do bad things. And really, really difficult.
and I probably fucked myself up a little bit in the process because I was getting no therapy at the time. But it did teach me a lot and to this day it's still probably one of the jobs that I think forced me to face my own reality. then from there we had Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria that ripped through the state and I got moved into child protection.
Kristi McVee - Intro (00:35)
Welcome to Conversations with Kristi I'm Kristi McVee a former WA police officer, specialist child interviewer and child abuse detective. For years I worked on the front lines investigating child sexual abuse, where I saw the risks, the patterns and most importantly, the ways that we can protect our kids. Now I'm here to share that knowledge with you. This podcast is all about real conversations, giving parents, carers and educators the tools to keep their kids safe, both in person and online.
Through survivor stories, expert insights and practical advice, we'll navigate these tough topics together so you feel informed, confident and empowered. Because when we know better, we can do better and our kids deserve nothing less. CONTENT WARNING Some topics and conversations can be triggering for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised as your mental health is important. Please refer to my website and the show notes for available support services.
Kristi McVee (01:33)
Hello and welcome back to Conversations with Kristi
I actually think this might be the last podcast for this year. I don't know if you know Jeannie that my husband's got cancer at the moment. yes, you do know that because β I think I might've canceled one of our last podcast attempts and I decided that I would finish off the year with you. So I think this is it. I don't think there's actually anyone else booked in. if there is, it's a surprise to me, but this is my last podcast for the year just so that I can spend some time caring for my husband.
Jeanie (01:43)
minutes.
Thank you.
Kristi McVee (02:02)
I love talking to people and having these conversations but my gosh all of the production behind it is really full on so I'm giving myself a break and getting back to it next year. But yeah Jeannie thank you so much for jumping on and having the conversation. I'm really interested in your story. I know we've had conversations before and you've got a really interesting story and I'm sure my listeners will love to hear it and also they'll love to hear what you do now. So for anyone listening Jeannie Dean can you please explain
Jeanie (02:26)
Mm-hmm.
Kristi McVee (02:30)
or share, know, first of all, where you got started and how you got into this space of, you know, child safeguarding and safeguarding, yeah.
Jeanie (02:38)
β
It's a long story and I'll try and chunk it out into sections but I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself and I grew up in a household that was very much the dynamic of family violence. So from a
From there, I suppose, you can kind of create that image in your mind of what that would have looked like. I also grew up in a, what at that time was a regional area in Harvey Bay. And so telling people what was happening in your life in a small town was not very easy. And so it was, I'd grown up basically being told what happens in the house stays in the house. And so I just followed that trend.
at the time that I was assaulted. went home that morning. Sorry. I went home the morning after that happened and I went to bed and told nobody. My sister picked up that something wasn't quite right and she said, you okay? And I think I might've even told her to F off and leave me alone. And our parents basically pinned us against each other as a means to
basically alienate each parent and separate and manage through division. early childhood experiences were quite challenging. And then my extended family outside of that, you know, we didn't have heaps of money, but we didn't go without. We had incidences associated to addiction. And then after I was assaulted when I was 15, I...
decided that I was going to move back to Melbourne. My mum was going to leave my dad. And we came to Melbourne. I'll just backtrack for one second. If I think about the thing that I remember the most out of that family violence experience was coming home from school. I was in grade three, coming home from school and my whole house was empty and I was put in a car and driven to Queensland.
Kristi McVee (04:13)
Mm-hmm.
Jeanie (04:27)
We weren't told, me or my sister weren't told why we were going. We weren't told that my dad didn't know that we were leaving. So basically it was a very quick pack and run situation. And then my mum made contact with my dad halfway to Queensland because she was fearful that if she didn't tell him, then it would be worse. And so basically that's been my life has just been this constant little, you know,
Kristi McVee (04:39)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Push and pull.
Jeanie (04:56)
little tornado
of chaos and just trying to not get sucked into it all all the time. But unfortunately when you're little and when you're 15 you are little even though a lot of 15 year olds think that they are not. Yes we are young adults and we need autonomy and we need to be involved and be included and you have decisions not made for us but with us. But at the same time it led me to a pathway of coping mechanisms that were really unhealthy.
Kristi McVee (05:02)
Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you.
Jeanie (05:26)
and I ended up using a lot of drugs. I'm not gonna say that I didn't have a great time while I was doing those drugs because I did, but it was a really poor, it was a coping strategy that was, allowed me to feel normal, quote unquote. β
Kristi McVee (05:41)
Yeah, yeah.
And a lot of people do that. A lot of young people do that. A lot of people. And we know that anyone who is a victim of any kind of child maltreatment has a higher risk of becoming, you know, either using substances to numb out the emotions and stuff. And it's not until we become an older, more wiser adult, hopefully, that we realize that's what we were doing.
Jeanie (05:44)
Yeah.
Yep, absolutely.
what forced me to realise that is I actually got arrested when I was 18, which was incredibly scary. So the only involvement I'd had with police in my life was to do with my father and the mistakes he had made in his life when we were young kids. And other than that, we were told that police were
dogs and blah blah blah. So yeah. Yeah yeah. And so when you're coming from a household such as mine where you know and I'll get into the bit about my dad later but you know that was a very scary dynamic to be in and not knowing who to trust and what to trust and what made that even worse is that
Kristi McVee (06:26)
Yeah, I knew that's what you were going to say. I'm pretty sure I've been called all of that.
Jeanie (06:50)
It actually involved a underworld situation in Victoria that we did not realise we were all part of. so then basically from there, the concept, everything that had been drummed into me about police then became reality because it was one of the largest corruption cases in Victoria at that time with the major drug investigation division. β
Kristi McVee (06:58)
scary.
Yeah.
Wow.
And I guess you wouldn't have known whilst you were doing that, you know, getting involved in that. You just, you're just having a good time as a teenager. And this is how teens get in trouble because they just do it. Yeah, you're just part of it, but then you're in it, in, it. Yeah.
Jeanie (07:28)
I was just part of something, you know, I.
Correct. In it.
Yeah, and it was really in it. And we didn't realise that. Obviously at the time we were just, know, yeah, and it is very true that, you know, organised crime syndicates, they do absolutely target vulnerability. And, you know, we were absolutely.
Kristi McVee (07:36)
Yeah, right.
teams.
yeah. And teens are the most vulnerable because, because
we, you know, I mean...
I look at my, I got kicked out of home at 15. So you were, you know, sexually abused and then, you know, sort of like pulled into this world that because you thought that you're an adult and you know, I thought I was an adult at 15 because I was kicked out of home, you know, all of a sudden I had these big responsibilities on my shoulders and you know, you just think that you can cope and handle anything. Like I look back at how stupid I was. I was so, so stupid. I mean, I was trying to act an adult but I was nowhere near an adult.
Jeanie (08:14)
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I think that, I think it became, from my end, it was just about surviving, you know, like I just needed to survive. And my mum at that point in time was not in a good way herself, β dealing with being a victim of violence and fractured relationships with my other sister because of, you know, my father doing the whole alienation thing. β And then after we got arrested,
Kristi McVee (08:38)
Yep, totally.
Yeah.
Jeanie (08:52)
I was kind of, I thank the universe for that arrest because if that didn't happen, it was a sliding doors moment. I either, know, statistically, if we rely on science and rely on research, I probably should have ended up being a sex worker with a heroin addiction, you know? instead I had an amazing
Kristi McVee (09:01)
changed your path.
Yeah.
you
Jeanie (09:22)
police officer but I'm not going to mention her name because I don't know how comfortable she would be given the dynamics that sit behind that case. But she single-handedly just made and made me and my now husband who I got arrested with at the time who I'm now married to.
Kristi McVee (09:26)
Yeah, that's fair enough.
that's
cool. Like, that's kind of like, whoa, that I didn't see that tune coming. That's amazing. You're still together. That's amazing.
Jeanie (09:41)
Yeah, yeah. Still together,
yeah. That little street kid romance, you know. We survived it. But certainly the exception, not the rule. So any kids that are listening, that is not anything that, yeah, doesn't happen that way.
Kristi McVee (09:51)
Yeah.
That's not how it usually happens. No. And I mean,
I'm still with my husband nearly 30 years, you know, next year. that's not the, we are the exceptions because I think we're just too stubborn to give up. I'm like, we're just too f****g stubborn. literally.
Jeanie (10:00)
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah and I can't be bothered. I'm putting
all of this effort, I'm sticking it out.
Kristi McVee (10:15)
trained you just how I like you.
Yeah, I know. I know. But no, and you know, we come, you know, all of that trauma that you have from domestic violence growing up in that domestic violence family, you know, and having that experiences. Also, that doesn't make us easy to deal with. They've had a tough, a tough ride, you know, like they've, they've hung on there like a bronco. I joke, I joke, but it's funny.
Jeanie (10:33)
Absolutely, yeah. husband
is being the... So yes, we got arrested together. I met him when I was just 18. And we were arrested probably about six months after that. We moved in together three weeks after we met. You know, don't do anything slowly when you're a traumatized young person. Everything's very quick.
Kristi McVee (10:52)
What a change!
β No, yeah that's
true.
Jeanie (10:59)
Don't leave me is basically what we're saying. yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it wasn't until probably, so after the arrest and everything happened, I kind of, that was my, you know, light bulb moment of I don't want to be my dad and everything I've been doing has been not to, I don't want to be an angry person. I don't want to be a resentful person. I don't want to hurt people.
Kristi McVee (11:02)
codependency. β Like I need you to survive.
Jeanie (11:26)
And I knew that if I didn't change, that I was going to hurt people and more than I already had by doing what I was doing. And so like with this, with the drugs and all that sort of stuff. so I, my husband struggled. well, my boyfriend at the time, but Judd, who's now my husband, he struggled to get, to get away from the drugs and get off them a little bit more than I did. And that was partly because I found out I was pregnant at just before I was arrested.
Kristi McVee (11:32)
Yeah, exactly.
Jeanie (11:50)
and
Kristi McVee (11:50)
You
had something to give up for. mean, he did too, but at the same time, you had another human growing. It's a great, I mean, for some people, it is the biggest motivator to not put that onto a child.
Jeanie (11:55)
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah,
100%. And because of the arrest, I ended up not proceeding with the pregnancy because the probability of prison time was very, very real. β And my husband, the police gave him an option to take the whole lot and let me go. And this is three months of being with a person. And he said, let her go, I'll take the lot.
Kristi McVee (12:10)
Okay.
β
Hahaha
Jeanie (12:25)
Yeah, he basically is huge. And that's why now it's, you know, I couldn't have my career without him because I wouldn't, can't work in the space I work in with a criminal record. So he, yeah, he literally saved my life in more than one way. He's the safest person I have in my life that I can talk to who, you know, we've put each other through the wringer. And like you said, yes, they've...
Kristi McVee (12:27)
What a sacrifice as well, you know,
Yeah.
Jeanie (12:50)
had to hang on like a bronco because I absolutely would have been a nightmare. Absolutely, 100%. Just different, just different. It's different, you know, like I know exactly what I can be like and I reckon I could be a nightmare, particularly when I was younger. But I own it and it's made me who I am and I don't hide away from that. And if you like me, you like me and if you don't, you don't and that's fine. But I'm, you know,
Kristi McVee (12:52)
Yeah, probably from both sides, you know? Yeah, it's just one way in these situations. Yeah, totally.
Same. Same. I know.
Yeah, but having that
one person, makes all the difference, doesn't it? It helps because they don't give up on you and you don't give up on them. And so then when you when that happens, I remember I don't know about you. Yeah. Yes.
Jeanie (13:20)
huge. Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like that song, I've Got Issues. You know that song, I've Got Issues and you've got them too? Yeah. When they came out, I was like, my God, that's our song.
Kristi McVee (13:36)
let's go down the aisle to it. No, but I reckon like with my husband and you know, he didn't have the same childhood experiences or anything like that, but he had severe, like he was very ADHD and he had, know, he was, you know, all that risk taking behaviors, there was all sorts of things. And so.
you know I looked at him as like you know he was kind of he saved me because I would have been on the street and I would have had no I've had no one and so you do you kind of trauma bond a little bit but at the same time
Jeanie (14:03)
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
Kristi McVee (14:09)
at the same time, nearly 30 years in, and this is where I sometimes reflect on our relationship. I'm like, far out, we've been so many different people in that time. You're not just the same person you were at the start. I think it takes, sometimes it takes time for you to both find your way and for you to realize that. And it's not giving up on each other, but sometimes I wanted to give up. But part of my trauma was I had a rejection and abandonment.
Jeanie (14:28)
Yep.
Kristi McVee (14:39)
trauma and so I used to go when we when we get divorced like I got married at 19 nearly 20 years old and I used to say when we get divorced I'm taking the dogs and I'm doing this and I used to talk about breaking up all the time because because I was preparing for him to leave or I was preparing myself for me to leave but I you know like here we are 30 years later and I'm like by the way you're never leaving me now I know
Jeanie (14:52)
Me too, Yep.
Yep.
Yeah, we've worked through that.
Kristi McVee (15:07)
And it wasn't until I actually had a psychologist, I went and saw, I don't know about your, and I'd love to hear how you worked through all of this, but I had a psychologist when we were early married, like maybe two or three years in, and she said to me, you're trying to push everyone away so that they can't hurt you first.
And that was the first time anyone had called me out and I was like, is she right? And like sat with it and I was like, she's right. She's actually right that I'm trying to push everyone away and make everyone leave me so that I'm right. Like I, cause in the background, I'm always thinking they're going to leave me first. So I might as well like push them away first. Yeah.
Jeanie (15:37)
Yeah.
get in first. Yeah.
I think, yeah, as a younger person, was definitely, I definitely had walls up and I didn't mind throwing a few punches in order to be able to get people away from me. I was a very fiery, yeah, very, fiery. and it's, I've done so much therapy over the years that I now think about what I've done back then. And I'm now feeling
Kristi McVee (15:56)
Same.
Jeanie (16:07)
the pain and the guilt and the compassion and the empathy for the person from when I was 18 that I knew that I inflicted pain upon that probably didn't deserve it and it could have been dealt with in a better way. And they're things that I needed to do because for me it was about breaking cycles when I had my own children. so having kids was hugely triggering for me. I didn't want to fuck them up.
Kristi McVee (16:09)
you
Yeah.
Jeanie (16:29)
I was my biggest number one priority. Don't fuck the kids. You know, like don't ruin the kids. Yeah. And no matter how much you try, there's no such thing as a perfect parent, no matter what cards you've been dealt. And I found an amazing therapist who he'll probably get inundated, but his name is Nick Valentine and he is phenomenal. He's a psychotherapist and he started getting me to
Kristi McVee (16:32)
Don't fuck them up. β
Jeanie (16:54)
look at different parts of myself using a model called internal family systems theory. And it has been a game changer. So it's got a Buddhist underpinning. β so for people that are listening, if you think when you're talking to your kids and you hear them say, or as a parent, and you think part of me thinks this, but part of me thinks that. And those parts are actually different parts of you at different ages.
Kristi McVee (17:04)
Mm-hmm.
Jeanie (17:19)
So something about that is triggering something in you, which is then enforcing the decision. And so what I had to do was take control of all of those parts that felt like they weren't being heard, they weren't being honored, that pain wasn't being acknowledged. And now I can actually close my eyes and visualize how old those parts of me are.
Kristi McVee (17:40)
Yeah.
Jeanie (17:41)
And so this little vulnerable part that loves to rear her little head is probably about six and she's got mousy brown hair, it's me, sitting in my family home in Queensland against a wall, just sobbing into my knees. And now that little girl lifts her head up. Whereas before I started the therapy, was never, it was, you know, I just couldn't function. And then the teenager part of me would come and protect that little girl and start
Kristi McVee (17:49)
Yep.
Jeanie (18:08)
smacking everyone around.
Kristi McVee (18:09)
Thanks
Yeah, I can
totally relate to that because I've got a age and when I get really defensive, that's my teenager. That's my, that's my like, you know, fuck you, fuck everyone, fuck, you know, and I do. I've spent a lot of years in that and I found that when my daughter got to teenage would that like made me just regress into a teenager. And, and, you know, I didn't have a therapist to talk me through this. So I've kind of worked this out on my on my own, but and the hurt little girl.
Jeanie (18:18)
Yeah.
Yep.
Kristi McVee (18:38)
inside she's the one who was abandoned at seven and made to feel like she wasn't worth anything and you know and so that read its head up the minute my daughter was born and you know so you know and you've got and I think this is the how
Jeanie (18:49)
Absolutely.
Kristi McVee (18:54)
I guess for me and you, we've spent the time to learn this and we've spent the time to understand ourselves. And my teenager still rears my teenager up. I had a fight with my daughter the other day over something so trivial. And it was literally teenage me fighting with my daughter. And when I walked away, I was like, fuck. And then I had to go and apologize. Cause I was acting like a complete ass.
Jeanie (19:10)
Yeah.
Where did she come from?
Yes, 100%. And I think,
and I think too that that's probably been my biggest learning out of everything. You know, if I, I suppose as parents or as adults, we forget how to speak kid. And we think that our problems are.
you know, the be-all and end-all, you know, got to make sure we can pay the mortgage, got to make sure you get to work, kids have to be able to get to school, school uniforms, you know, we want to make sure they've got an iPad and we want to make sure this. And so then we think that we're under all of this pressure and we are, not to minimise anybody's pressures, but, or you might be battling a family violence dynamic yourself, but then we, then these, our kids come to us with these issues that they might be having at school or with friends or whatever.
Completely unintentionally, I noticed myself minimizing some of those things that my kid was bringing to me because, that's just a normal age-appropriate problem that you can sort out. But to my daughter and to my son, that's the biggest thing in their life. That's equivalent to us not being able to pay our mortgage. And so through, I went and did a degree in, because that's what you do, right?
Kristi McVee (20:22)
Yeah, 100%.
Hahaha
Jeanie (20:29)
you're traumatized, you go and do a degree so that you know that you're right. So I did a degree in developmental trauma theory to try and understand my kids and how to parent better. Probably a bit excessive, you don't have to go and do that. So parents, there are many resources without degrees that you don't have to do but...
Kristi McVee (20:33)
Hmm.
That is super excessive. But I became a police officer, so what the fuck do I know?
Yeah,
but if you want to, please do, because we need all of the people out there.
Jeanie (20:54)
Yeah, it changed
my whole outlook on how to safeguard my kids, how to safeguard myself, how to understand a young person better and in turn how to understand me because I didn't have any of that growing up. I didn't get taught how to play. I didn't get taught. you know, then yeah. And so then I had to wanted to make sure that I didn't
Kristi McVee (21:16)
You're in a battlefield.
Jeanie (21:21)
create the same battlefield in my house with a very different foundation and very different context because my husband and I have, you know, our commitment when I fell pregnant was I said I never want my kids to feel the way that I felt when I was little. And he was like, mostly, yes.
Kristi McVee (21:35)
Did that happen? Mostly? Yeah, because you know
what? My daughter came to me the other day and said to me, mom, and I became a control freak. I had to control everything. Yeah, you relate.
Jeanie (21:46)
Yes, I'm still a bit like
that.
Kristi McVee (21:48)
I had
to control everything, I had to control every aspect. like, I was the adjudicator or whatever, the conductor of my family. And then I've got two people, a husband with cancer, I can't control, and a daughter with nearly an adult that doesn't need me to control her anymore or to control her life.
Jeanie (22:07)
Yep.
Kristi McVee (22:07)
You know,
and where the fuck does that leave me? I'm like freaking out over here going, what have I got? I've got nothing left. so, know, yeah, so it's it's rearing its ugly head for me right now. But at the same time, she said to me, mom, like.
Jeanie (22:14)
Now I don't
Kristi McVee (22:22)
You need like, come on, like you got to let go. And so whenever I let the rain out, like let the let go a bit or cut the cord, she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I need you again. And so we've got like this. We're learning push, pull, learning. I'm learning about this at the moment for her sake. But she said to me, I actually said to her, I'm sorry, like, and I'm sure you've been there, Jeannie, that you might have said the same thing to your kids. Like we try our hardest not to fuck our kids up, but we're going to do some sort of like they're going
Jeanie (22:32)
Yeah, push forward.
Kristi McVee (22:50)
and away and go, you traumatized me by not letting me have an iPad or you traumatized me by not letting me have sleepovers.
Jeanie (22:53)
here. But you know what I
find in that though that is so amazing even is that as a kid I would never have said to my parents that you were hurting me. I would never have said that. So the fact that my kids and obviously your child can say you know they can call us out because they feel safe enough to say this isn't okay you know like it's not okay what's happening here or
Kristi McVee (23:20)
Yeah.
Jeanie (23:23)
I don't appreciate it when you raise your voice to me. don't. And I've, and I love that, you know, so some people look at that from different generations and think that that's a kid with too much entitlement. And it's like, no, that's a kid with a voice and a voice that deserves to be heard. And so even when it comes down to my son's about to turn 18 this weekend and it's freaking me out, but that's okay.
Kristi McVee (23:33)
as defiance. Yeah.
Yeah, 100%.
you
Jeanie (23:48)
So when they're born, it's like, don't kill them. then when they get to 18, it's like, please don't kill yourself or anyone else. It's a very different fear. so I am scared because this was the age I got arrested. And so you get re-traumatized by different things. And I've been very open with my kids about everything. They know everything. They knew I had a drug problem. They knew that we got arrested. They knew, you know, we...
Kristi McVee (23:50)
Hahaha
It's so scary.
Yes. Yes.
Jeanie (24:15)
laid it all bare because I think for kids it can feel like a lot of stuff might happen but they never get to see it actually happen. And so I said, you're going to know that it actually happened and I'm going to give you little chunky bits in age appropriate ways. And then with my son now, he knows the whole story. So that's kind of what got me, my life got me into
Kristi McVee (24:22)
Never to me. Yeah.
Jeanie (24:41)
working in this space and so I started working in child protection. I started my career though in drug and alcohol so I worked with people with heroin addiction and methamphetamine addiction. You know, go in or go, you know, go hard or go home, don't start with the small stuff. And I loved that job but I did that job for the wrong reasons so I, you know, I did it to try and save people and avoid saving myself. Then
Kristi McVee (24:53)
No
Jeanie (25:05)
Black Saturday bushfires happened and we all, and sorry, go back. So I did drug and alcohol and then I started working with sex offenders and through AXO in post release and pre, and so they were, so they're post release but they're about to be released on parole or on a supervision order.
Kristi McVee (25:15)
In prisons?
Okay.
Yep. Yep.
Jeanie (25:28)
And so I did work with them in prisons at East Attacks. So they were on what was then called a ESO, an Extensive Supervision Order. Now it's a Detainment Supervision Order, I believe, a DSO.
Kristi McVee (25:38)
Yeah, we've got similar
terminology over here, but I mean, it just means that they're about to be released and someone has to keep an eye on them. For the lay terms.
Jeanie (25:45)
Yes, so these guys are actually still in the prison though. So
they're not on segregated prison land, but they're in the front, so in like little cabins basically. Correct. So my role was to assess their suitability for and how they went in the community. So we'd take them out into the community and watch their behaviours, how far they tried to push the boundary, etc. So it was a...
Kristi McVee (25:57)
They're getting prepared for release basically.
That's interesting.
Jeanie (26:15)
It was a social kind of support and assessment role that worked collaboratively with Corrections and I did that because I wanted to understand how...
where it might get a little bit funny. I wanted to understand how they could, how a person gets to the point where they can do that and you know like trying to understand what happened to me basically and I strangely enough enjoyed that job for a couple of reasons. One was
Kristi McVee (26:36)
Okay.
Jeanie (26:43)
It made me understand that what happened to me wasn't my fault. It helped me to see people rather than behaviours. And it helped me to understand that in order to achieve positive outcomes, you have to be able to work with people that do bad things. And really, really difficult.
and I probably fucked myself up a little bit in the process because I was getting no therapy at the time. But it did teach me a lot and to this day it's still probably one of the jobs that I think forced me to face my own reality. then from there we had Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria that ripped through the state and I got moved into child protection. I never had any interest here.
Kristi McVee (27:22)
Do you mind if I ask you?
Do you mind if I ask you about your job? I find it really interesting because for me in the police, I was able to see the person behind the behavior as well. I don't know why I was able to, you know, pull away from that whole they're a sex offender, they hurt kids, are pieces of shit. You know, they're just a freaking rock spider, whatever the terminology you want to use. I don't know why it was easy enough for me to do that. I think it was because I quite early on made peace with the fact is it's not my job to judge
people it's my job to put them before the court and let the court judge them not that I think the court does a great job but at the same time I think that's that's the only way I was able to stay sane in it all right and so for me I think I'm really intrigued by I'm intrigued by anyone who works with sex offenders or child sex offenders especially because it takes a certain level of person to work in that
Jeanie (27:57)
Definitely not.
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (28:14)
that space because you have to pull apart your own beliefs and and get okay with them and so what I find interesting is it validated your feelings of like I didn't do it to myself someone else did it to me and it's their responsibility what they did and that seeing the person behind the behaviors and a lot of people struggle with that is there any like learnings that I mean you've pointed out those three but is there anything else you learned about sex offenders that you probably most people wouldn't know?
Jeanie (28:14)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
yeah, so that they're people first and foremost, which, what did I learn the most? think I definitely learned how my family felt about it. they, they told me one of them, can remember one of my cousins actually telling me that it was, he was, it was disgusted by it basically. β yeah. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (28:59)
that you're working in a prison with sex offenders because
you were trying to see if they were ready to be released.
Jeanie (29:05)
Yeah,
well I was just trying to, at that point none of my family knew anything about me being assaulted. I could never say, so my mum, I didn't tell anyone about my assault until I was 32. And so I think I had to, you know, I was like, well they're just, they're people and I need to try and understand the person. But I didn't feel like I could say I need to try and understand the person because of this. You know, like.
when really what I wanted to say was I just wanted to understand them more so that I could determine whether or not the fact that I got raped was my fault or somebody else's. Like did I have skin in the game to that assault? But what I learnt about them is they are very calculating, they are highly sensitive, they are very attuned to non-verbal cues. β I worked with high-risk sex offenders, so people like
Kristi McVee (29:55)
3
Jeanie (30:01)
Mr Baldi and Robin Fletcher who was a pagan or he claimed to be a witch and they're very, very, very, very manipulative. β
Kristi McVee (30:14)
Yes, and
they try and manipulate even the people like you. they're manipulating everyone in their, they're controlling, they're the maestros of their world and they're very good at it and this is what people don't realize. Yeah.
Jeanie (30:18)
right.
correct and they groom everyone and everything around them.
Kristi McVee (30:31)
How does that,
Jeanie (30:31)
you know...
Kristi McVee (30:31)
how does that, how do you reconcile that with the fact that they're a person? Because they've, they've, they've obviously honed those skills over time, right? And they become really good at it. They've been doing this for a long time, to the point that they can make anyone believe anything. And if you're not attuned to that yourself, which you would have been, I'd imagine being a victim of domestic violence, being a victim of abuse, you would have been attuned to the fact that
Jeanie (30:39)
Absolutely.
Yep. Yeah.
I was attuned
to it, but I also had to be really mindful that I didn't β correct. so there's two kind of layers to this. I'm sitting up now. Hang on a minute, sorry. You can edit all of this out.
Kristi McVee (30:57)
bowl for it.
Just so well, it's up to you
if you want to tell everyone what you've been through. But yeah, I can edit it out as well.
Jeanie (31:12)
Yeah, so
I have had a spinal surgery, so I'm a bit rickety and hands are bit shaky and whatever. Yeah, that's all right. I think so for anybody that is gonna work in this space or, because I know a lot of people that come from traumatized backgrounds, they move into these environments. I think.
Kristi McVee (31:17)
Thanks, thanks Jeannie for just putting yourself into pain for this podcast.
Jeanie (31:36)
I think the one thing I had to be really mindful of with working in the sex offender space was that one, that I didn't minimise information based off my own lived experiences, which can happen. The other thing was I needed to be able to, my role was not punitive. My role was not centred around compliance. So I had to ensure that my biases were kept in check.
Kristi McVee (31:47)
Yes.
Jeanie (32:02)
And so very, very, very hard to do. And for me, I wanted to know more about the person before I met them, rather than about their offending. So I would read, I would always obviously, because from a safety point of view, I need to know what I'm working with, but I always got to know the person through a desktop review of their lived experience and their reports. And then I could see the kid and what they had lived through from what they had.
Kristi McVee (32:02)
That's hard to do.
Jeanie (32:28)
self-disclosed and then I would look at corroborating evidence that supported that because self-disclosure among sex offenders is very, very prevalent and a lot of the time there is some embellishments associated to those experiences to minimise or undermine or justify what they've done. And so that helped me separate person from behaviour. So I was able to look at, if we think about parts theory,
I was able to identify different parts within that person as a means to be able to protect myself and them from any transference or anything like that occurring. I am an empath through and through. So I knew that if I got to know them in terms of their life, then it would make it easier for me to work with them. And it was difficult. I don't know that I...
Kristi McVee (33:12)
Yeah
Jeanie (33:15)
would necessarily do it now at this point in my life in the same way and because then after that I went to corrections where it was compliance driven. I can tell you that I definitely prefer working with post release as opposed to like post release on an order for supervision than working with sex offenders out in the community that are lower risk.
Kristi McVee (33:18)
Yeah.
punitive.
Jeanie (33:38)
and that's just me personally. just, I think I enjoyed the prison because the prison is controlled and... gives you safety. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (33:45)
Yes, it's a controlled environment. Yeah, it's a massively
controlled environment where and almost like it's not a real world.
Jeanie (33:50)
Yeah.
No.
Kristi McVee (33:54)
They've got their own like ecosystem within the prison, right? So it's not a real world and you're basically coming in as like someone who's overseeing it but you're not actually part of it. So you leave at the end of the day and you switch off and you don't even think about it where as when it's in the community, it's so different. It's like a lot more risk taking, a lot more risks involved, a lot more considerations.
Jeanie (33:58)
Yeah, they've got subcultures, different rules.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think the hard bit being in Corrections as well was, and a lot of people might be surprised to hear this, but a lot of people that work in Corrections for many, many years didn't have to have a qualification. And so you had people that were, you know, might have been working at Woolworths packing shelves and then applied for a job at Corrections and all of a sudden they're working with sex offenders, you know. Correct. Yep. Yep.
Kristi McVee (34:31)
Shit.
Well, it's no different to prison guards. You know, you can
be anyone from any walk of life, as long as you haven't got a criminal record, I believe, and you can go and become a prison guard. And what, you know, yeah, we wonder why we have prison guards being manipulated and groomed by people within the prison system to do their bidding.
Jeanie (34:47)
Correct.
And then we wonder why we have.
Correct.
Yes. I think, you know, I think I don't have any regrets around any jobs that I have held and I've had different jobs for different reasons.
Child protection was never a job. So from the sex offender point of view, that was intentional. knew why I wanted to do it. I wanted to understand myself more because I couldn't talk to anybody about it. I couldn't even bring myself bring. I couldn't even use the word rape for, you know, many, many, many years. I would never identify with being called a victim. So, you know, still some things that sit in the back of my mind there around that sort of stuff. But that's life and everybody.
Kristi McVee (35:33)
It's the beliefs
Jeanie (35:34)
different. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (35:34)
behind it, isn't it? Right? Because you for a long time, you were a victim of domestic violence as well. and so, you know, that victim label for one to the and a lot of people don't like that label, right? That victim label makes you weak. Like in your mind, you're weak. You don't have choice. You like that. It means that you whatever whatever you put us associate that with. But you were a victim and you are you are a survivor or, you know, whatever label you want to have on that. But
Jeanie (35:39)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (36:01)
It is hard for a lot of people that victim label and I think, just a quick question. Yeah, I know.
Jeanie (36:04)
Yeah, I think now I'm just me, you know what I mean? I don't want
to be a victim, I don't want to be a survivor, I don't want to be an expert, I don't want to, you know, I'm just me. Yeah, you know, and I think that's different. Everybody's different and everybody needs to align with what makes them feel comfortable, safe, seen, heard and secure and that's fine. But, you know, for me personally, know, labels for me,
Kristi McVee (36:13)
But you are. You're an expert in Janey Dane.
Yep. Yep.
Jeanie (36:34)
can be a little bit triggering because when you're growing up being called names, they're labels. And those labels are very hard to separate yourself from and not believe when it's constantly being pounded into your head. And so when it's a victim, it just takes me straight back there. If it's a survivor, it means somehow I'm this fucking magical, and I'm not, know? Yeah, you know? I'm just me.
Kristi McVee (36:39)
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Yeah, correct.
Yeah.
Hero. Unicorn. Yeah.
Jeanie (37:01)
And that
to me is important because it's taken me so long to accept that I am enough as I am. I don't have to have a title attached to me. And, you know, for years I was a public, I've hidden myself through a title. I'm a public servant. I'm this, I'm that. No, I'm just me. And that's A-OK. Sorry, you had a question?
Kristi McVee (37:07)
Yes.
Yeah, I can see that.
No, I was just thinking. you went from like, you chose to go into like working with sex offenders for like purposely intentionally chose that you didn't just fall into that job. went, I'm going to go and work with those people. And then you because of the black, black Sunday fires, you went into child protection. You didn't want to be there. take it.
Jeanie (37:37)
that blacksmithed by us.
Yeah, so AXO,
the Australian Community Support Organisation in Victoria, were then, so they were contracted to provide this sex offender service to the public service. And then a lovely lady said to me, I think you'd be really good in child protection. And I was like, okay. So I just fell into it and I ended up staying there for nearly 10 years and it was difficult.
And that was probably the job that forced me to hold the mirror up to myself around what my lived experience was. I definitely wasn't an easy public servant for managers, that's for sure. I didn't cope well. didn't, well, no, I coped very well, but I did not enjoy the bureaucracy that comes with the public service. You know, if being told when a kid's disclosing to you that they're being beaten by every single family member.
Kristi McVee (38:17)
You would have been saying it everywhere.
no.
Jeanie (38:36)
and then being told, we don't have a bed tonight, so we're just gonna have to wait till tomorrow, so they're gonna have to go home. Yeah, that doesn't fall into the ethics of being a dream, yeah.
Kristi McVee (38:42)
It doesn't seem like enough, is it? When you were that kid.
When you were that kid, and it's the same for me, I didn't handle, you know, that the lack of, you know, when a child didn't disclose to police and then child protection's like, well, police didn't find anything. When we're going to close our file. I used to get so angry because that kid was being let down by all of us. I felt I took it so personally.
Jeanie (39:07)
Yeah,
and it even goes beyond that. know, we could probably go down the rabbit warren together here, but β yeah. So it's like, I was disappointed from, you know, sometimes from Vic Pol or whatever law enforcement agency because the quality of interview is so person dependent. Then I was disappointed around child protection because the quality of their services is so person dependent based on training, investment experience.
Kristi McVee (39:14)
Probably shouldn't, probably shouldn't start at here. Like we will never get finished. β
Yes.
Jeanie (39:34)
Then you get into the family court who relies on child protection, who's got a shit assessment. Then the fact, you know what I mean? It's just this system based trauma that happens over and over and over again. we all, everyone who's worked in the space knows it. We see it. We, you know, the attorney general is doing everything they can to try and do what they can with the budgets that they have. And I understand all of that from a system based point of view. But when you work in that space and you've had that lived experience, it feels very personal. And
Kristi McVee (39:38)
I get it.
totally. You put yourself in the shoes of those children.
Jeanie (40:03)
I couldn't do,
yeah. And so when you deny that child access to safety, you're denying me access to safety. And so I decided I was like, I think I'm out, I'm done. And so I then went, ran a sexual assault service for a year and then went into emergency services.
Kristi McVee (40:14)
Gosh, that would have been confronting.
You're hilarious
because you've just like literally gone, right? I'm going to deal with every part of my trauma.
Jeanie (40:32)
Absolutely, yep. And at the time...
Kristi McVee (40:35)
And
I'm joking because it's like you literally chose every career. You could have chosen a nice career as a hotel receptionist, but no, you chose every career that was going to put you in the face of it.
Jeanie (40:42)
I know. Yeah
and I think part of it was I didn't know how else to deal with it and when you know I don't know about you but when I was younger going to therapy and you know they just weren't options you know and if you did there was something wrong with you and it was something you never told anybody about and whatever and so you know that just wasn't an option and so
Kristi McVee (40:58)
as a normal.
Jeanie (41:10)
that my work allowed me to one, avoid my own pain because I was investing in other people's pain, but telling myself that this is fixing me at the same time. And I think that after the Australian maltreatment study was done, I think that the public service and the legal fraternity more broadly really needs to look at the prevalence of maltreatment in the public service that's impacting decision-making.
Kristi McVee (41:15)
because you're helping other people.
my gosh, yes. And also you brought it up before, right? How easily do people, you brought it up when you were saying I had to like look at myself and not allow myself to use like my experience to like for want of it.
Jeanie (41:36)
Yeah.
to assess another
person.
Kristi McVee (41:51)
Yeah, so if I, you and you said that, and you've said it so beautifully, more beautifully than I can, you know, every person in these services, the police, the child protection, the family court, they're all making personal judgements based on their own experiences and then...
They have their own trauma. Most of us come into these, you know, and it's only the really highly brave people like you who go and say, right, I'm going to I'm going to think about this. I'm going to look at what this means. That's OK. That's OK.
Jeanie (42:22)
Yeah, sorry, I'm just getting a message. My daughter.
So, yes, I agree with you. And I think that that's, that was why I then stepped away. And not because of the maltreatment study that happened after that, but I could see that happening. And I knew that I was a feature of that. And that my work was hurting me. And so I decided
Kristi McVee (42:37)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Jeanie (42:47)
at the worst time as we jump straight into COVID to go out on my own. And I'm like, what am doing?
Kristi McVee (42:52)
Same happened to me. Same thing happened. Jeannie. β I know.
I, and by the way, lockdown, lockdown, lockdown and like, how am meant to make money? Yeah.
Jeanie (43:00)
Yeah, and in Victoria, you know, so you couldn't even
leave your front door at home, so like in Victoria, so we were, but I was determined to, the thing that's, I suppose the point that got me to where I am now was my husband telling me that I wasn't the same person that I used to be. So the job had changed me dramatically. I'd be, I had become the job.
you know, everything was about the job. was taking phone calls 24-7, I was helping people in the community for nothing, I was, you know, and I still do that. You know, I...
Kristi McVee (43:36)
I mean, you've had multiple
phone calls whilst we've been talking.
Jeanie (43:39)
Yeah, correct. Yeah,
so and all of this stuff, I do a lot of it pro bono. So I don't, I don't take money off people who need that money for their kids. And I'll just provide some advocacy support for some system based stuff, whether it be family court or helping people navigate the criminal system or whatever it is. And then I started Safeguarding Solutions Australia as a means to get out of the bureaucracy and
actually be allowed to have honest conversations with people about children, child safety and the safety of vulnerable people more broadly, so mental health, aged care, disability. But my focus was always the voice of children and making sure that I could teach myself again how to speak kid. And now it's been
Kristi McVee (44:25)
Yeah.
Jeanie (44:30)
So 2018 I started the business and I've been working in that business pretty solidly, well, since then. But the last two years have been really challenging after my injury to my neck. So I think why did I start it was I wanted no more red tape. I wanted to operate under the conditions that were being set by the commissioner, not by the department.
because they are clashing quite a bit. And I wanted to educate the places where kids frequent the most about what child safety is and how do you create child safe environments. And a lot of these organizations that we've worked with along the way, they haven't even realized that they're a child focused organization or a child serving organization. You know, if we think about people, kids doing apprenticeships through, you know, local mechanics.
Kristi McVee (45:00)
Yes. Yes.
who they service.
Jeanie (45:26)
And it's like, okay, do you realize that you have to adhere to the principles of child safety because you employ minors? And they're like, no, because we're not providing services to kids. And I'm like, you're providing an apprenticeship, which is a service. So you cannot have the nudie calendar on your bathroom wall and hanging up women's or men's underwear as a token of what you've been able to achieve over your weekend. Like none of that stuff can happen.
Kristi McVee (45:26)
Yeah.
Jeanie (45:54)
And this is the stuff that parents don't get to see, right? They see the face of a business that their child is walking into and they assume as any parent would that it is safe because we have work cover and we have work safe and we have all of these other entities and the Commissioner for Children and Young People that say these businesses have to be safe. And so a lot of parents take that on face value and
A lot of these organisations are not safe for kids. A lot of these organisations have no understanding that they have to be ensuring that they're providing safe spaces for kids or what that even looks like. And if I use the emergency services as an example, so if we think about fire services. Fire services in Victoria, they spend more time with kids providing services than they actually put out fire each year. So they didn't know that.
Kristi McVee (46:45)
Yeah.
Jeanie (46:47)
And so it's like, okay, so what's your child safe strategy? What does this look like? What does this look like? What does this look like? And a lot of the firefighters, so the culture within the organisation was, well, our job is to put out fires. So why do we need to?
Kristi McVee (46:59)
But you're doing education, you're around children,
you've got like those little cadets and rangers and all of those things.
Jeanie (47:06)
Absolutely.
Yeah. And if you think about, you know, you know, a lot of fire services have junior brigades, then you have army reserves. Yes, army reserves have junior cadets or so all of these systems that are assumed by parents to be safe. I'm not saying that none of them are, but I'm saying that everything could always be better. β And from the organizations that I've walked through across the country and internationally,
Kristi McVee (47:13)
Yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah.
but they haven't done the due diligence. Yeah.
Jeanie (47:34)
they're, you know, we have a long way to go. And I think the biggest gap that exists right now is that parents are unaware of what they need to ask, what they can ask, what should be in place. How do they check in with their kids about whether or not what should be happening is happening and what support system is there if it's not. And a lot of these organizations are like, well, that's going to cost us money and we don't have the money to do it. And it's like, okay.
Kristi McVee (47:52)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Jeanie (48:03)
So you've got a budget for your Christmas party, but you don't have a budget for protecting your staff.
Kristi McVee (48:07)
Yeah.
or the
children within your organisation which are your staff. and I mean, look, I think this is the silliest, like this is crazy to me because I think if you have a child in your employment or in your organisation, you have to have a child safety policy of some description because in my experience working, you know, investigating abuse, I saw so many kids being preyed upon, targeted, know, maltreated because, you know, it's
Jeanie (48:14)
organization.
Kristi McVee (48:39)
just what we do to the apprentice, it's just what we do to the cadet or the ranger or the whatever. I mean, I was involved in investigating so many cases within the armed forces in Australia because they had an inquiry into all of the abuse of cadets and rangers and like their junior children, before they became.
Jeanie (48:58)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (48:59)
serving members by serving members of the thing and that was considered as an initiation or a hazing and these people are completely and utterly like there was one case that I can remember was involved with the band and they were hazing their junior players and there were some horrendous things that happened to those poor kids when they were kids and for some reason it was seen as normal.
Jeanie (49:06)
Amazing. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Kristi McVee (49:26)
behind when children, you know, it just needs to change. We need to change our thought process and just because they might be 15, 16, 17 doesn't mean that they're adults. It means that they're still children. You have a responsibility and if you're in power and authority over those kids, you could be considered an abuse of your power.
Jeanie (49:44)
Correct, yeah. So I think the, I agree with you and I think that a lot of boards and employers don't understand what their legal duties are associated to child safety. We give a lot of board presentations to a lot of large scale organisations that I won't mention for obvious reasons, but.
Kristi McVee (50:03)
No, that's fair.
Jeanie (50:04)
that these are organisations that are out in the community providing services to community members that are highly reputable across Australia who don't know what they don't know. And when we hide stuff, and this is what happens in large-scale organisations, things get filtered before they get to the board, right?
Kristi McVee (50:16)
Yeah, well that's the problem.
Jeanie (50:25)
And so what we have said is the filtering has to stop because the board is the people that are going to go to prison and lose their houses if things don't go right. And so they need to be able to understand the risk that they're carrying and what the other, the flip side to that is, so you've got the head of entity not knowing, and then you've got the parent that also doesn't know, and then you've got all the secrecy and the bullshit in the middle. so, correct.
Kristi McVee (50:33)
Exactly.
Yeah, people covering their own asses, making sure that they
don't get caught out because they don't want to go be involved in an investigation. They don't want to lose their job. They don't want to, yeah, and crazy.
Jeanie (50:55)
Absolutely. And a lot of, you know, you think about
work, even if I go back to when I first started speaking during the podcast and I said work became everything to me. It helped me understand myself. It helped me understand my pain. So within that, it means that you're building connections and subcultures then get created within large scale businesses, whether it be, you know, and you can probably say from policing culture, it is nuts.
Kristi McVee (51:20)
Same. Same.
Jeanie (51:22)
It can be very, very healthy, but it can be very, very dangerous.
Kristi McVee (51:25)
And a lot
of these big organizations such as policing, such as military, such as fire, such as any kind of large scale organization where there's this culture of authority and it filters down power and it filters down like the police culture. And I'm not saying there aren't amazing police officers, detectives and people doing everything they possibly can.
Jeanie (51:36)
Now, yeah.
phenomenal. I have friends, many friends that
are amazing.
Kristi McVee (51:47)
But there is this culture of, the first day I spent out of the academy, I was taught all of this stuff in the academy, and then the first day I got out of the academy, a senior constable who'd been in the job for 20 years said, forget everything you've been told, it's nothing like that, and we don't dog on our mates. So basically,
We don't do what they tell us to do and don't you don't go and dob on people when they do the wrong thing That was the first thing I was told the first day it completely blew me like I was this and I was this night I hadn't really learned got my voice yet like Police policing like you when you said all your husband said to you. This has changed you Yeah, I you know, it was the same for me and my family They were like you are not the same person anymore and you are not you know You're not the person we remember and so that
Jeanie (52:12)
Thanks.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (52:35)
that's a real wake-up call when your family's calling you out and saying you have changed beyond anything that we remember.
Jeanie (52:41)
I just didn't
trust anything. Well, I didn't trust anything before and I trusted everything even less once I got into public service. So, you know, what safety I had found in other areas of my life was eroded by the experience within the public service. And I think the experience of my roles within the public service between child protection and corrections, I don't regret for a second. And I loved my job and I loved
Kristi McVee (53:01)
in
Jeanie (53:05)
most of the people that I worked with, I'm not going to say all of them, but most of them. I think that we have the potential to provide a really amazing service in Australia, but we need to get old people out of old seats and dust them off and get fresh eyes in there because we live in a very different society, we live in a very different culture, we live in a digital age that people holding positions do not understand and
Kristi McVee (53:08)
Yeah, same.
Yeah.
Jeanie (53:34)
I think that for as long as we have this, and you can almost watch it happening, so there's a real us and them that exists within the public service between frontline operations and people that sit in what gets referred to as the ivory tower. And I think that gap needs to be bridged a little bit more to create better outcomes for kids. I think if that happens, that would make a big difference.
Kristi McVee (53:48)
Yes.
Jeanie (53:57)
I too can attest to the fact that the first day I started in child protection I finished my beginning practice training, which was three months. I walked into the office. My team leader had placed about 13 files on a swivel chair, walked over to me and she said, these are the files, read them all and remember that babies die.
Kristi McVee (54:18)
Jeannie.
Jeanie (54:19)
That was my initiation into child protection. Yeah. So basically everything that we had been taught in beginning practice training of you'll be supported, you'll have this, you'll do this and it'll be great. And it's all going to sound like this amazing place, like a unicorn comes out of. It is absolutely not like that. I do, I would love to be able to tell people, yes, go and do this job. It's amazing. And it is amazing.
Kristi McVee (54:21)
Get out.
Jeanie (54:43)
but please make sure you look after yourself first. Please make sure you know yourself really well before you get into it and be able to be assertive enough to push back because otherwise their public service is very good at getting blood out of stones. So look after yourself.
Kristi McVee (54:52)
Yeah.
Yes, that's exactly what happened
with me. I mean, I was getting like the same thing. Like I was pushing back in the early years. I just went with it. And this is where Paul, you know, you're just out of university, you're 24 years old and you think I want to go and save the world and get into child protection. And you're basically just a lap dog that is told what to do when you do it. Because if you push back, you're bullied.
Jeanie (55:19)
the agitator.
Kristi McVee (55:20)
you're the problem, they're going to find ways to get rid of you or they're going to find ways to make your life difficult. And this is the culture that is within these cultures, right? This is the culture within policing, this is the culture with...
Jeanie (55:29)
And these are the systems we're
entrusting with our children.
Kristi McVee (55:34)
are
1000 % and then the family core and all of these things have this culture within them because it's easier to go with the flow and turn a blind eye than it is to push back and say, no, this is not enough. This is not good enough. And I mean, look, we sound like we're jilted ex lovers, but unfortunately I think you and I both have been out long enough to know that this is just, this is the culture we're trying to change with what we're doing now.
Jeanie (55:51)
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah. And I think that I by no means want to send a message to anybody listening to this podcast not to engage your emergency services. We do have amazing opportunities to access services. We have a very congested service system that would, and the people in those services for the most part, are there for the right reasons to deliver the best service possible to people that are being harmed.
Kristi McVee (56:11)
No, 100%.
Jeanie (56:29)
but sometimes the system impacts the capacity for the operation to do what it needs to do. so, yeah, so just, I think, go in with education and, you know, don't be afraid to say, no, I'm not doing this, you know, and it just because somebody is a police officer or works for child protection or works in youth justice or has a little badge that says, I have a little bit of control over you.
Kristi McVee (56:37)
And the legislation too.
Jeanie (56:59)
doesn't mean that you can't advocate for your rights and your own safety.
Kristi McVee (57:04)
Okay, well that's a good question because I think a lot of people listening to this will probably think, no, there's no, and I've had people say, I did a podcast interview a week ago where I was criticizing the current justice system and that there's no justice in the justice system and all of this stuff. And I was criticizing it from the point perspective that we don't trust children and we don't believe children and it's so hard for children's evidence to ever actually get to court to begin with. But then when it gets to court, we still think that children are unreliable witnesses and that they lie.
and all of these things. Anyway, we won't go there. But what I want to say next is this. If you are a parent, or my question is, is if you are a parent and you're concerned about your child in an organization, doesn't matter what one, could be a sports-based organization, could be a community-based organization, or any kind of organization, what kind of things should they expect from that organization?
Jeanie (58:00)
So they should expect at a minimum that, well depending on the state and jurisdiction that you're in, at a minimum across all states and jurisdictions there should be a commitment statement to what your position on child safety is. There should be an appropriate vetting and screening process and as parents we need to be asking what is your child safe recruitment process? Does this include a working with children's check or a
or a blue card or whatever it is that you're from. There should also be what is the supervision ratio. So if you're providing a service, what's the supervision ratio? What are the safe systems of work that have been put in place to protect children that you provide services to when I drop my daughter? So for example, for my daughter who did cheerleading, I'm sure this person who I'm friends with now who owns it, but I'm sure when she first met me she thought,
Kristi McVee (58:26)
Blue card.
At the time she was like, what
are you talking about?
Jeanie (58:51)
Who are you?
And I said, do you have a child safety policy? What's the supervision process for comp? What does this look like? What do you do in terms of your bullying strategy to ensure kids aren't excluded? How do kids make complaints to you guys? And if it's about you being the owner, who do they go to? Who's your child safety marshal? And she just looked at me as if like, we're just a dance school.
Kristi McVee (59:14)
Yeah, but you
made that dance school safer by asking those questions and bringing them to their attention.
Jeanie (59:17)
Yeah. And so when you go to
these things, I went to this first cheer competition, there are kids everywhere and I do not see one person that is identifiable as a child safety marshal. Yeah. So that way you've got, so then you've got adults that are walking amongst everybody's kids, kids getting changed everywhere, et cetera. What's the system here to be able to ensure safety and protection of kids and as parents?
Kristi McVee (59:24)
and I know it's so dangerous.
the sun.
Jeanie (59:46)
We need to educate ourselves. It's not up to somebody to tell you that you shouldn't stick needles in your arms, right? That's something that you need to know, right? That's something you have to try and learn and educate yourself on. When you have children, you have a responsibility to educate yourself on how to keep them safe. And so what I would suggest to every parent is to get on the Commissioner for Children
Kristi McVee (59:57)
Yeah.
Yes, it's the same.
Yes.
young people.
Jeanie (1:00:11)
Commissioner for Children
and Young People's websites, across whatever state you're in, there's one in every state. May not be mandatory in all states, but there is one. Or you minister for children if you don't have a commissioner and find out what are the minimum standards set by your government that organisations have to comply with or it is recommended and you make an informed decision. If you're living in a state where it's not mandatory, then you need to seriously consider whether or not you
Kristi McVee (1:00:15)
Yep. Yep.
Jeanie (1:00:39)
you know, for me, if it wasn't mandatory and the organisations weren't investing in it at that time, and in Victoria, I was looking for this for years before it became a legislation, because as a kid I knew, you know, my situation was with a basketball dynamic. So, you know, I was very attuned to who's who in the zoo, and if they don't have it it's not mandatory, don't leave them unsupervised, no matter how old they are.
Kristi McVee (1:01:00)
Yep.
Yep.
Jeanie (1:01:06)
if they're 15, 17, people
Kristi McVee (1:01:06)
Doesn't matter.
Jeanie (1:01:08)
think, and please, please, please, as a final message, don't think that because your child is older, that they are safer. In a safeguarding context from a community organisation or broader, the older the child, the greater the risk because there's less supervision. Whereas in child protection, the younger the child, the greater the risk because they've got no self-protection capabilities from a parent, not from an organisation. So please make sure that you...
Kristi McVee (1:01:25)
Yes.
Jeanie (1:01:35)
understand that kids getting older offers a protective factor in one sense but it creates a whole lot of risk in another. So don't be naive to think that at 15 it's okay for them to be unsupervised in an environment that you haven't actually assessed to be safe yourself. That's your job.
Kristi McVee (1:01:55)
100 % and I saw and this is so common and the problem is is that culturally and you know ideas around this is that you know once they get over a certain age children get over a certain age as a culture we believe that it's the child's fault that they've been sexually abused there was a there was a survey or some sort of like research done by I can't think who it was Australian child abuse center or whatever they are
Jeanie (1:02:14)
I know.
I.E.
excellence,
Kristi McVee (1:02:25)
And they came up, they surveyed all of these people and I think it was like 30 % or 40 % of the people who answered said when a child is a teenager, it's their responsibility to stop child sexual abuse. Now we know, I know that children who are at risk, they're at risk because how are they meant to push back against an adult? They're groomed by these people? We've talked about all of this stuff.
Jeanie (1:02:48)
We
teach kids to comply. From the time we give birth, we are teaching kids to comply with an adult's direction. You will feed when I feed you. know, like it starts from infancy and then we just continue it along the journey. And even if I think about high schools, don't even get me started, you know, it's as simple as this.
Kristi McVee (1:02:51)
Yeah, I know exactly.
Uh-huh.
Exactly.
I know.
Jeanie (1:03:16)
Just meet kids where they are. Kids aren't assholes for no reason. Kids don't behave badly for no reason. Kids don't tell you you're a fucking asshole for no reason. So if they are saying all of these things, you should be curious enough and ask yourself, what influence am I having on this behavior and how do I support that shift? And a lot of the time we project
Kristi McVee (1:03:18)
Yes.
Jeanie (1:03:44)
the responsibility to fix the problem to the kid. So you're the adult sitting here saying, I don't know what to do, this kid's driving me nuts. You need 15 year old, you need to fix what I can't fix and understand. But I'm 50. It's like, that's just projecting responsibility to a child and setting them up to fail. And so I think we all as parents, educators, whatever, anyone who's working with kids.
Kristi McVee (1:03:56)
Thank you. It doesn't work like that.
Jeanie (1:04:13)
If you want to really be successful at working with young people, you have to hold the mirror up to yourself and find yourself as a kid and remember what it felt like. Once you can remember that, then you'll be able to understand where they're at and meet them where they are. But if you've got a kid that just constantly says to you, you just don't understand, listen to them because they, regardless of what you think,
Kristi McVee (1:04:22)
Yeah.
Jeanie (1:04:37)
They are telling you, you don't understand and when they're getting frustrated like that and outside their window of tolerance, you're losing them. Which means that then you end up with a kid like me who can't go home and say, I was raped this morning.
Kristi McVee (1:04:50)
Yeah.
And that's the last thing. mean, any parent who loves their kid doesn't want their kid to feel like they couldn't come to them if they needed them or needed support. And my daughter has had friends who have been sexually abused or raped. when they've gone and told a parent they've been given crickets, they've been slapped, they've been... Because when a child does disclose abuse and tries to disclose abuse, they've done their job. They've told the safe person that they think is the safe person.
Jeanie (1:04:57)
Absolutely.
Kristi McVee (1:05:18)
and it's our job to manage ourselves and assist them. There's not enough thought and processing done before we have kids. I really believe this, that we don't... And it doesn't come up until...
Jeanie (1:05:22)
Mm-hmm.
I agree. I think it's interesting that, you
know, you have to be able to be screened to be able to have a dog, that anyone can have a kid. Yeah. And, and I'm not saying that about anyone that's, you know, I, the benefit I think for me is that I don't live in a glass house and I don't throw stones. And I have been the drug addict. I have been the crook. I have been
Kristi McVee (1:05:38)
for some places. Yeah. Yes. And yeah.
Jeanie (1:05:54)
the person that called her dad's employment and told them he was dealing marijuana when he wasn't because I was an angry teenager that because he had hurt me, he'd abandoned me, he'd beaten my mom, he'd, you know, and, you know, I've been all parts of that. And which is why I love working with vulnerable people because I can relate to it. And when people are lashing out, they're not lashing out for no reason. And a really big part of, think my future state is, you know, for anybody,
you know, as Kristi said before, I have had neck injury and I'm probably going to have to pivot in terms of the work that I have done. a really kind of interesting element of that is I want to teach parents how to speak kids so that they can connect with their kids better. And, you know, there's it's more than it's more than one conversation at a time. And you have to be prepared to hold the mirror up and say, I think I might have fucked up here.
and actually apologize to your kids and stop thinking that they're just younger versions of you and think about what you would have wanted when you were little and a young adult. But to kind of bring it back to safeguarding in the context of, know, that's safeguarding kids in your own home. Safeguarding isn't just about the external. We have to safeguard our own, you know, nucleus kind of culture.
Kristi McVee (1:07:08)
Yes.
environment.
Jeanie (1:07:14)
of what kind of culture do we want to set in our family for our kids so that when they do go into these organisations and the organisation does have a complaints policy, they feel safe enough to use it because they have a soft place to land when they get home. I didn't have that soft place to land, so I never used the systems available to protect me. So I think at the end of the day, safeguarding is an external big beast that is politically evolving all the time.
Kristi McVee (1:07:28)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeanie (1:07:42)
But I think if we start safeguarding at home and we empower our kids to challenge us as parents about our thinking, then we will create stronger kids who will create deterrence because they will be more assertive and less likely to be an easy target for somebody that's looking for an opportunity to sexually assault a child. But if we stop, if we keep closing these conversations down because we're uncomfortable with them and that's often why they're not had.
Kristi McVee (1:07:55)
Yes.
Jeanie (1:08:09)
we're uncomfortable with them or we have a trauma history we haven't addressed, all we're doing is creating a cycle of intergenerational abuse. So I firmly believe it has to start in here with us as people, as individuals, to be able to create safer environments for kids.
Kristi McVee (1:08:25)
boom, mic drop, she just dropped all of the gold. I 100 % agree with you. I couldn't agree more. And it's in my own experience. Look, I'm not saying I have all of the answers and I haven't parented all of the, you know, like my trauma and my experiences come up all the time, even now, I'm still struggling with that. But it's about owning your part in it, owning your feelings, emotions and what you're doing and just, yeah, and doing all of these things. But also, I think there's a lot to be said
is that you can speak up if you're not sure. You can ask those questions of their dance school, of their sporting club, of their school, of whoever. And I guess the last thing I would say on all of that is just come from a place of curiosity so that you don't come across as aggressive or like that complaining, whinging parent, because we don't get results when that happens. If we come across as, hey, I'm just wondering, do you guys have any of these policies in place? And then if they don't, just say,
Jeanie (1:09:01)
Yeah.
Yes.
Yep.
Kristi McVee (1:09:21)
okay, well, are you aware that you're meant to have them? Or if it's a legislation or if it's not legislated like in Western Australia, it's a recommendation? Are you working towards putting some of these in place and it's planting those seeds? Yeah. True.
Jeanie (1:09:31)
Yep.
And how can I help? How can I help, you know?
How can I, you know, if you haven't got it yet, I'm happy to do a bit of digging. If your kid's part of that organisation, and a lot of these organisations are run by volunteers, a lot of these volunteers have known each other and their dads went and played footy together and so on and so forth.
Kristi McVee (1:09:53)
Yeah.
Jeanie (1:09:54)
be part of the solution and it's very similar to &S, right? So if you think about the Occupational Health and Safety Act in whatever jurisdiction you live in, there is a key line in that act that says you must hold responsibility for your own safety. So child protection and child safety is no different.
Kristi McVee (1:10:09)
Ace's sign,
yeah, 100%.
Jeanie (1:10:11)
you have to take the
responsibility for your children's safety and ensuring that your children are safe when you are engaging them in the organisations. It's not just up to the organisation, it's up to everybody. And I think everybody's waiting for somebody else to do something and then nothing gets done. So as parents, if you have children, no matter what their ages are.
Kristi McVee (1:10:26)
Yeah.
Jeanie (1:10:33)
you need to be part of the solution and not wait for people to do things because it will never happen and kids will never be able to reach that pinnacle point where no matter where they go they know they're going to be seen, heard, believed and safe. I think we need to as a community, it's a community issue and parents are part of that community.
Kristi McVee (1:10:44)
Hmm.
Yeah.
And it's a community response, you know, like it requires parents to not only ask the questions, but, you know, maybe put their hand up to go, hey, here's the website that you need or hey, here's a sample of what this club has.
Jeanie (1:10:59)
Yeah.
hey,
I found one from the club down the road. Do we want to just kind of pivot, like just reshuffle that so it fits our context, you know? Like, I think...
Kristi McVee (1:11:12)
Yeah. Or do we want to get an
expert in like someone like you or me and come and talk about child safety so we're all on the same page together.
Jeanie (1:11:18)
year.
Yeah, I'm happy to give you a policy, but the policy is useless unless you're living it. So it requires a conversation. And that's the bit that I think that's the other thing for parents is that we've spoken so far about, you know, as parents, what do we want to be looking for when we're looking for child safe agencies or organisations or services? And we've spoken a lot about policies, systems, processes. The biggest thing is around just go there for a day.
Kristi McVee (1:11:25)
Yes. It does.
Jeanie (1:11:49)
or stay at the club for the whole day and watch how people interact with each other. That will tell you what kind of culture exists and how safe your kid's gonna be. So when I hear, I'll give an example for footy because it's probably the most relevant across all states in Australia. But if we think about football and we think about under 16, sometimes you'll have under 16 players.
transitioning and playing in senior football teams. So under 19s, if they're good enough, they'll be playing, you know, in the ones or the reserve side. So you've got a child with a group of men or group of women or a mixed team, whatever it may be. And all of sudden they're talking about how many beers they had on the weekend at a party or whatever, or who they hooked up with to.
how much a gram of ice is and who got on the puff last night and blah, blah, blah, Hurry.
Kristi McVee (1:12:43)
Yeah, depending where you grow up and where you are. I mean, it's probably
very culturally everywhere, like even in my community.
Jeanie (1:12:50)
listen, there's drugs in every club, every single club.
you know, and I think that as when we when we kind of looking at that, I think there's a really big gap in safeguarding when it comes to the transition from junior to senior environments, when they sit under the same umbrella. And no different to the junior brigades and the normal brigades. We forget that they're kids and a whole lot of inappropriate stuff happens.
Kristi McVee (1:13:11)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeanie (1:13:16)
and parents
that are part of those clubs minimize it and they're like, it's fine. You know, it happened when I was younger too. It's like, okay, can you go? Yeah. Like, are you happy with your son sitting in there while they're racking up lines of coke in the change rooms? Are you okay with that? Because that's what happened when you were younger? I don't think so. But that's the reality. So these are the conversations when I'm going to clubs. I've grown up around sporting clubs my whole life. So I can talk to them.
Kristi McVee (1:13:22)
Yeah. Does that mean it's okay?
Yeah.
Not so much coke
being done in netball clubs or pony club, there is like my daughter did pony club. I was on the committee and I was like, I never left her alone. Like she, went with her everywhere she went. When she became a netballer, I became the coach and I was like, you know, that coach that, you know, safeguarded all of those kids in my team. And I was watching other teams and I was making, you know, if I was, you know, training late or whatever, I would stay until every child had a safe place to go like or a safe
Jeanie (1:13:48)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (1:14:12)
home or like I'd be like is your parent coming like where are they you know and so I was that safe adult but who it just takes one person to not be
Jeanie (1:14:19)
But again,
the risk is the risk in that is that it's person dependent again. So it's about so for my local club, it's all good because I'll do whatever is required to create safety. Right. And but if I disappear, who's going to take that role? So it's not embedded, not embedded.
Kristi McVee (1:14:25)
Exactly.
same.
Yeah, exactly. So that's why we need these. That's why we need these
policies and these cultures. I mean, we had a case in WA where and it's actually I know some of the people personally where these reserves, they were part of like a reserve club for a feeder club into the AFL and they had an 18th birthday party. There were 17 year olds and 16 year olds there and older kids and they were doing, you know, drugs and alcohol. Everyone was drinking.
they got in a car, they drove and he crashed at high speeds, killed one of the top, you know, reservists and you know, he, this young fella was only 17 at the time, he's now in jail for the next nine to ten years because he killed one of his best mates and you know, and so this is a thing like...
Jeanie (1:15:23)
Good luck.
Kristi McVee (1:15:26)
All those, and I mean, I'd imagine some of those adults feel so much guilt and so much shame because they were not being safe adults, they were not being responsible. Yes, it's those young people's lives, but we're talking about kids here. We're talking about an 18 year old is not like, they might be legally an adult, but mentally they're not an adult. But you know, they are culpable and they are the people who are responsible. But as adults, we're responsible as well.
Jeanie (1:15:41)
Yeah, then I'm not. Yeah.
And
there's intergenerational cultures that exist within sporting institutions or local, you know, child-serving agencies, whether it be the Scouts or whatever else. The intergenerational culture sits within those agencies and within those organisations. And I think...
Kristi McVee (1:15:57)
Yep.
Jeanie (1:16:06)
just that story there around, you know, a young boy getting in a car, driving a car. That example's been set for him by virtue of the fact that adult men are getting in their cars after being on the piss all day and going the back streets to go home. So it's like you, you then say, they're so silly, how ridiculous. It's like, hang on, mate, you've got skin in the game here because you've taught these kids that it's okay to drink and drive because you drink and drive. So we, think it's around
The standard you work past is the standard that you accept. And when we go into these sporting clubs and have these conversations, you can't be fluffy about it. You know, it's very firm, very direct. Yep. And I love it when people try to, you know, pop up a little challenge of, you know, it's just getting into this wokeness, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, so if I know that your son is using a substance that I think is causing harm to him,
Kristi McVee (1:16:38)
Yes.
No, it's gonna ruffle feathers.
Jeanie (1:17:04)
If it's really just woke stuff, do you just not want me to tell you? You'd just rather wait for the full blown addiction to hit you away or what's your preference? Well, no, of course I'd want to know about it. I said, okay, so if there's no system in place that says that we have to tell you about it, you're not going to know about it. So do you want to be part of the problem or part of the solution? And it's like, yeah, I think a policy is a good idea. Okay, great, no worries. But I think it's about bringing people on the journey. I don't think for...
Kristi McVee (1:17:11)
Yeah.
them.
Jeanie (1:17:32)
You can't beat people into submission with this stuff. It's gotta be done with people, not to people. Sometimes you've gotta bring out a bit of stick and organisations have to be prepared to get rid of people because good people do bad things. And if you're not prepared to do that, you're basically waiting for an assault to occur and a big fat common law claim to come your way. So if it's not gonna be enough to...
Kristi McVee (1:17:44)
Yeah.
Jeanie (1:17:59)
make changes because it's inherently what's in the best interest of children. Think about what it means for the reputation of your business. Think about what it means for your reputation personally as a person that chose to ignore these risks despite them being brought to your attention. And think about the fact that your club's gonna close because no one's gonna be there. And if you've got a mandatory system like in Victoria, then you can actually be shut down.
because WorkSafe will come in and close your doors for you.
Kristi McVee (1:18:29)
Yeah, and not
to mention people can lose, I mean I know that when I was on committees I think there's some legislation around the committee being the responsible parties and can be considered responsible.
Jeanie (1:18:39)
Yes, so they
are actually in Victoria under ASIC and the registration, the committee members are legally liable and hold a duty and a lot of these small sporting agencies don't realise that and so if you don't have the right insurance it'll be your house that pays the lawsuit and when you say that generally you get compliance.
Kristi McVee (1:18:59)
care.
Yeah, well, it has
to be and we need to stand up against this because it's gone on for too long and we and our kids need us to and it's our job. I guess Jeannie, like we could talk about this forever. mean, I could go I could pick apart so many parts of your story, but I bet you your back's hurting now.
Jeanie (1:19:19)
my neck so yeah.
Kristi McVee (1:19:20)
Okay, so we're
going to we're going to like finish there and I reckon maybe next year or whenever I start back up again, we could have another conversation. So if they want to learn more about safeguarding and what you do or about you, where can they find you?
Jeanie (1:19:35)
So you can find me on LinkedIn if you just look up Jeannie Dean. β you can look up, yep, otherwise you can look up Safeguarding Solutions Australia. we are unique in terms of our service offering. We are not a traditional safeguarding agency. We work across the whole plethora of vulnerability, including adults.
Kristi McVee (1:19:38)
I'll put it in the show notes.
Jeanie (1:19:54)
And our focus primarily is ensuring safe systems of work and we provide expert witness reports to ensure that organisations that aren't compliant are brought to justice through whatever regulatory body. But we also work in a preventative and proactive space. So if you are an organisation that might have found yourself in a little bit of a pickle and not quite sure how to get out of that pickle with understanding safety, dignity and respect of every party involved.
We're generally the organisation that would get that phone call to say, you give us a hand? There's other agencies that work and do a lot of training and all of that sort of stuff. Because of my current circumstances, I'm going to have to shift what we've done. We did invest in residents for a long time, but yeah, a few changes, but yes, you can reach out to us anytime. And if we can do it, we will. And if we can't, we will find you the best person who can. And we refer to people like Christie and...
Kristi McVee (1:20:36)
Yeah, there's got to be a pivot.
Yeah, great.
Jeanie (1:20:48)
other organisations for things that aren't the right fit. If it's not the right fit for us, we will not blow smoke up your backside and tell you we can deliver everything. We'll make sure that you're with the right person.
Kristi McVee (1:20:58)
Yep.
Yeah, amazing. And you know, like a lot of people didn't realize that this was even a thing, right? Safeguarding has become a new, I guess, industry in its own right because we didn't have any of this. And the only reason safeguarding is even here is because people have done the wrong thing. So, you know, if you've got an issue with safeguarding, it's because you've got an issue with the fact that people have done the wrong thing.
Jeanie (1:21:14)
You're right.
Yeah and
if you've an issue with safeguarding you've probably got major issues in your occupational health and safety programs also because they're dependent on each other. Yeah thank you. β
Kristi McVee (1:21:26)
β Probably. Well, thank you so much, Jeannie. I'm going to let you go so you can
go and rest that pullback that you've just had surgery on. But thank you very much for sharing your experience and all of your knowledge.
Jeanie (1:21:39)
Thank you, thank you so much.
Kristi McVee (1:21:41)
Thank you for listening to this episode. Education empowers children, strengthens parents and most importantly, prevents abuse. That's why I do this work and that's why you're here. So truly thank you. If you'd like more support or resources, follow me on social media under Kristi McVee or cape-au where you'll find all the links in the show notes. You can also grab a copy of my book, Operation KidSafe, a detective's guide to child abuse prevention at www.cape-au.com
where you'll find further resources and self-paced courses to help you in this journey of protecting your kids. If you found this episode valuable, please take a moment to leave a review or share it with someone important. Your support helps more parents and caregivers discover this important information and take action to keep kids safe. Check the show notes for extra links and support. And most importantly, thank you for showing up and taking action to protect your kids. See you next time.