Peter Littlejohn worked alongside Brett Cowan the Daniel Morcombe killer he is paying $50 a month in restitution to Cowan for an assault Source: News Corp Australia
Fingers are being pointed over why a serial and violent child rapist like Brett Cowan was ever released from jail.
A MAN who decked convicted child killer Brett Peter Cowan over a workplace dispute is still paying compensation to the serial paedophile — but he's glad he bashed him.
Peter Littlejohn was working with at a tree lopping Cowan in Perth in 2010, where the murderer had fled after murdering Daniel Morcombe on the Queensland Sunshine Coast in 2003.
Mr Littlejohn said that Cowan was a bully who picked on other employees including his brother in law, so one day he confronted him at the caravan park when he was living.
"I'd had enough of his stuff. I went around to confront him and he called me a dickhead and before I knew it, I just punched him," Mr Littlejohn said.
While Cowan may have been able to overpower little boys, but when he picked on someone his own size, it was a different story, Mr Littlejohn said.
"I punched him in the face and he went down and we wrestled and I punched him a few more times.
"He was tall and weedy and basically he knew he was no match."
After the assault, Cowan reported Mr Littlejohn to police, who pressed charges of assault occasioning bodily harm.
"The police rang me and I handed myself in. I did the right thing and just pleaded guilty but the magistrate made me pay a fine of $7000, saying you just can't go around hitting people," Mr Littlejohn said.
Magistrate Robert Young court ordered that $5,0000 should go to Cowan, which Littlejohn has been paying off at a rate of $50-per-month.
He has been paying his debt to Cowan ever since at $50 a month — and he is still paying the child killer.
When Mr Littlejohn found out it was Cowan who killed Daniel Morcombe, he reconsidered his attack.
"I couldn't believe it, I was shocked when he was arrested, he said.
"But I'm now glad I punched him."
NATIONAL PROTECTION STATISTICS A MUDDLE
CHILD abuse experts have called for a uniform national child protection system to be created across Australia using the same definition across all states and territories.
Australia's system of measuring child abuse is inadequate and gives no indication of the size of the problem according the Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia report "They Count for Nothing".
The report criticises the annual national reporting on child abuse put out by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare because it repeatedly admits the figures cannot be compared because different states have different definitions of what constitutes child abuse.
"The statistics count for nothing, therefore the children count for nothing," said author Professor Chris Goddard from Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia (CAPRA).
"We need to nationally agree on what is child abuse, we can't even agree on the reporting laws, so if don't' know the extent of the problem how can we address it," Prof Goddard said.
The last national report by the AIHW notes there were 252,962 notifications of child abuse in 2011-12 with only one in five substantiated, but inconsistencies between states point to differing interpretations of abuse said Prof Goddard.
The report states that across Australia, 21 per cent of children who were the subject of substantiations were for physical abuse. But this ranged from 15 per cent in the Australian Capital Territory to 29 per cent in Victoria. Nationally, 13 per cent of children were substantiated for sexual abuse. This ranged from 3 per cent in the Northern Territory to 22 per cent in Western Australia, 18 per cent in NSW, 5 per cent in Qld and 8 per cent in Victoria.
Some states did not even collect information on abuse of children in care, including Victoria where it was revealed this week that paedophiles preyed on children in care.
Dr Joe Tucci from the Australian Childhood Foundation collaborated on the report and said the inconsistencies meant authorities were in the dark.
"We're not counting it properly, not comparing apples with apples, not comparing the same definitions across the country therefore you can't have a national picture." Dr Tucci said stark differences in substantiated sexual abuse between the NT, just 3 per cent and WA, 22 per cent meant different degrees of evidence were being used.
"It should not rely on where you live as to what definition of child abuse is used," Dr Tucci said. "Sexual abuse is sexual abuse, it should not be open to the vagaries of interpretation." Many child protection agencies were also under-resourced. In NSW 50,000 children reported at risk of serious harm in the last year have yet to be seen by a child protection worker.
"Fundamentally if you don't understand a problem, what it's extent is, you are not able to know if what you are doing to address it is working.
"If you compare this to another health problem like diabetes, we know down to the last person how many people suffer from diabetes and how many take medication to treat it, how many are likely to be suffering diabetes, we don't know anything in relation to child abuse," Dr Tucci said.
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