A former youth worker used a child protection system database to access confidential information about a troubled teenager before he struck up a friendship with the young boy and sexually assaulted him.
Alex Jones, 30, bumped into his 13-year-old victim Zack* outside of Flinders Street Station, in Melbourne, in 2018.
Zack had been smoking cigarettes with friends when Jones approached him for a light, struck up a conversation with the unsuspecting teenager and then asked for Zack’s Facebook details, ABC reported.
Zack had no idea that on the same night the seemingly friendly stranger had accessed his personal information that was stored on CRISSP – a Department of Health and Human Services database that contains personal details about children in the child protection system.
A former youth worker used a child protection system database to access confidential information about a troubled teenager before he struck up a friendship with the young boy and sexually assaulted him (pictured, Alex Jones)
Alex Jones, 30 (pictured), bumped into his 13-year-old victim Zack* outside of Flinders Street Station in Melbourne
Jones had previously worked for Melbourne City Mission and was given access to the confidential database when he worked on a program funded by DHHS.
Jones left the role eight months before meeting Zack, and his authorisation to access the database should have been revoked.
Though in a case of human error he was still able to access confidential and private information, which he used to groom Zack in a series of messages he sent to the teenager following their meeting at Flinders Street Station.
Jones knew that the teenager had lost his father several years ago.
‘My brother died,’ Jones wrote.
‘F*** bro I’m so sorry,’ Zack replied. ‘IK [I know] how you feel.’
‘How come?’ Jones wrote.
‘My dad died two years ago,’ Zack wrote.
‘AW f*** bro,’ Jones wrote.
Also listed on the database was Zack’s hobbies, including cars, and a previous charge relating to car theft.
Jones boasted to the teenager about his high-powered Holden and sent the teenager a photo of it.
‘U wanna cruze?’ He wrote.
Jones sent a series of messages to Zack following their encounter at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne
Jones accessed information about Zack on the CRISSP database and learned his father had passed away
‘Wanna do some dohies,’ Zack responded.
Jones continued to boast about his ‘burnout car’ before inviting Zack for a joyride.
‘I can only just take you but,’ he wrote.
Jones picked up Zack several weeks later and the pair spent the night doing burnouts, eating fast food and sleeping in Jones’s car.
Zack says Jones even claimed he was ex-Navy and boasted he could track down information on anyone.
The teenager gave him a test and asked him if he could find out who his ex-girlfriend was.
‘I gave him her full name and he came back with her address, her mum’s phone number and all their names and ages,’ he said.
Jones sent a message to Zack inviting the teenager to a motel at Geelong, south-west of Melbourne, in May 2018
Zack says Jones even claimed he was ex-Navy and boasted he could track down information on anyone
Then in May 2018, Jones took Zack go-carting and back to a motel at Geelong, 75 kilometres south-west of Melbourne.
He gave the teenager alcohol, asked him to take his clothes off as a dare and waited for Zack to pass out before raping him for 10 minutes.
Zack says he was choked, suffocated and threatened during the terrifying incident.
‘It was the worst thing that I’ve ever felt in my life,’ he said.
He caught the train home the following day, stopped responding to Jones’s messages and tried to escape the torment of the incident through drug-abuse.
Jones was taken to court where he was sentenced to six years’ jail time with a minimum of three years and four months.
Zack’s mother penned a statement to the court detailing her son’s struggles following the incident.
‘Within a month or so after what Alexander [Jones] did … [Zack] ended up in hospital after chroming so much he had psychosis … that night he was handcuffed and taken to hospital by police,’ she wrote.
‘He started sleeping with a knife under his pillow.’
Jones bumped into Zack outside of Flinders Street Station in 2018 and accessed the CRISSP database the same night the pair met
DHHS ran a check through their CRISSP database and found Jones had been accessing information for 13 months since he stopped working.
He had looked 260 times at 27 different children who were clients of Melbourne City Mission.
It also came to light that an abandoned laptop containing child abuse material was handed into police in February 2018 – months before Zack was raped.
One of the users on the computer was Jones, but they could not charge him as officers could not determine which user had accessed the material.
They informed DHHS who then sacked Jones from his role at an out-of-home care facility run by a youth service provider.
Though DHHS did not check in with Melbourne City Mission to check Jones’ authorisation to access the CRISSP database had been revoked.
Victoria’s Information Commissioner Sven Bluemmel led an investigation into Jones and blamed the DHHS for failing to carry out checks on who was able to access the system.
‘When government does outsource anything, it can outsource some legal responsibility, it can outsource some management, but it can never outsource ultimate responsibility,’ he said.
*Name has been changed.
