The family of a girl who was sexually abused by a Sunshine Coast childcare worker say their daughter has been failed by the system, after a long-running case involving a bureaucratic bungle that resulted in his premature deportation to Fiji.
Arvind Ajay Singh, 43, was jailed on Friday, but will spend only 10 months behind bars – a sentence the victim’s father said had left him “absolutely devastated”.
Singh was removed from Australia as an illegal non-citizen last July despite the fact he was still awaiting trial on the alleged rape of a four-year-old girl.
After A Current Affair first exposed the case last September, motivation to extradite Singh gathered steam, with a Maroochydore District Court judge issuing a bench warrant for his arrest.
Singh then agreed to return voluntarily in February to finally face trial, almost four years since the complaint was first made.
“It’s been such a prolonged process, our daughter has had to continually wait to hear what is happening,” the victim’s mother told A Current Affair.
“She’s been asking questions. What’s happening to Mr AJ? Is he going to jail?”
Singh was known as “Mr AJ” when he worked at the Appleberries childcare centre at Burnside on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
The victim, who legally cannot be identified, was aged four at the time and is now eight years old, and has been affected by the long wait for justice.
“What they put our daughter through was just absolutely disgusting,” said her father.
The young girl gave evidence before a Maroochydore District Court judge via videolink whilst clutching a teddy bear for support.
Prosecutor Alex Stark set out for the jury the little girl’s clear disclosure about the alleged offending – first to her father, then both parents, and finally to Queensland Police during a recorded interview.
“Every time when I’m sad he gives me a cuddle. Sometimes when I cuddle him he pulls my undies to the side and puts his fingers in it,” she told police.
Singh pleaded not guilty, but, as is his right, never took the stand, nor gave a police interview.
With a lack of DNA evidence to support the allegation, Singh’s defence barrister, Lachlan Ygoa-McKeown, cast doubt on the young girl’s testimony in closing submissions.
“Just because the witness is 4 or 5, it does not excuse the weak, tenuous or vague nature of evidence that she gave,” Ygoa-McKeown said.
The girl’s mother described that approach as “utterly disgusting”.
“She had a voice to stand up and speak out and he just tried to discredit her,” she said.
After a three-hour deliberation, the jury delivered its verdict, finding Singh not guilty of rape but guilty of a lesser charge of indecent treatment of a child under care.
Judge Glen Cash described the offending as “brazen” and a “betrayal of trust”.
The reduced charge resulted in a lower sentence of 20 months in prison, to be suspended after serving just 10 months.
“I’d get longer if I didn’t pay my taxes,” the victim’s father said.
The victim’s mother said they were proud of their “bravest little girl” for standing up and making a difference.
“We had to fight for our daughter to get her justice, and we had to fight to get him off the streets so he could no longer work with children again,” she said.
At the end of Singh’s sentence, he will be automatically deported back to Fiji to live his life as a convicted paedophile.
The victim’s father described Singh as an “absolute gutless coward”.
“He’s never said anything from start to finish, he’s never put his hand up, he’s just been spineless throughout the whole thing. It shows what kind of grub we’ve had to deal with.”
The court heard the abuse left the victim suffering from fear, distress and anxiety, and that she still has trouble sleeping in her own bed.
Her mother also said the childcare centre involved failed to protect her daughter.
“We placed trust in a childcare system that promised protection and the system failed us, they failed our daughter,” she said.
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Dan Nolan is a senior reporter at A Current Affair in Queensland.