A Brisbane childcare worker accused of sexually abusing children took to the stand to deny the allegations, telling a jury he paid to have corrupted camera footage fixed because he believed it would exonerate him.
But the prosecution alleges Joshua James Capps took advantage of the fact it was normal for educators to have physical contact with children.
Capps pleaded not guilty to one count of rape and three counts of indecent treatment of a child, which he allegedly committed while working as an educator at a C&K centre in Geebung in 2023.
Capps took the stand on Wednesday, the third day of his District Court trial, and, under questioning by his barrister, denied each of the allegations against him, including that he touched tongues with children.
Capps’ barrister, Jack Kennedy, told the court his legal team was able to retrieve corrupted data from the cameras using an “IT guy in the suburbs”. He said that footage was then supplied to the prosecution.
When asked how he responded when the allegations were first revealed to him, Capps explained he was reassured by the fact there were cameras around the centre.
“Because there would be footage of what happened to show I’d be exonerated,” he said.
He told the court educators were allowed to have contact with children, such as hand holding and tickling. Capps was again played footage of some of the alleged incidents, in which he said he was tickling one child.
The trial, before Judge Dominique Grigg, has heard that Capps allegedly played a game called “doctors” with several children.
A mother of one of the alleged victims, a three-year-old boy, told the trial she walked in on Capps crouching in front of another child and their tongues were poking out, touching each other. The boy told his grandfather that Capps was a “bad man”, the court earlier heard.
Footage played to the court showed Capps crouching before children saying: “Doctor, help me, my elbow keeps breaking.” The prosecution said it would rely on the CCTV footage, which also showed Capps touching tongues with a two-year-old girl in the same way.
Capps told the court on Wednesday that the day before, he had been participating in “imagination play” with the children.
Crown prosecutor Arielle Spiteri replayed the footage to Capps and pointed out parts of the footage where he had gone into blind spots. She noted several times in which he was looking around, which Capps agreed.
Spiteri put to Capps that he was looking around because he was about to do something he shouldn’t.
Capps answered: “No, because it’s a playground full of children.”
Spiteri asked Capps how he and his legal team paid to have the camera footage retrieved. “I would suggest to you that evidence was a bluff. That you’re saying you wanted the CCTV to exonerate you, but that’s just a bluff. You don’t know whether that was in the footage or not.”
Capps replied: “It’s not a bluff. We watched the footage, at least some of it … where the alleged crimes happened.”
Spiteri put to Capps he had ample opportunity to commit the offences. He replied: “I haven’t committed them.”
The court also heard from the centre’s director, who had been in the job for just over a week before the allegations were reported.
The director said when Capps was informed of the allegations, he said he was playing “doctors” and that they would be able to see that from the camera.
The court heard that while the centre had 12 operational cameras, they were not used to monitor staff, and rather were used in the event of vandalism or other property offences. However, if a complaint was made about a staff member, the footage would be reviewed, the court heard.
Senior Constable Alexander Pearson, from the Child Protection and Investigation Unit, told the court much of the footage recovered from the centre was corrupted.
Pearson said while he had tried to fix it internally within the Queensland Police Service, some of the footage was unable to be retrieved.
When asked about how police interviewed the three-year-old boy over the allegations, Pearson said the boy was shy and reserved.
Capps’ legal team put to Pearson that the police questioning was entirely leading. Pearson agreed.
Capps denied that he was ever alone with that boy where he allegedly raped him. He was stood down with full pay, and terminated two days later. The court earlier heard Capps had been an educator at the centre for about three months before the alleged offending.
The trial continues.
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