THE parents of boys molested by a YMCA childcare worker are upset about the organisation's conflicting accounts about whether it checked the man's references before hiring him.
One boy's parents said it was hard to believe the non-profit organisation may not have checked that the pedophile had been dismissed from a previous job for similar behaviour.
Jonathan Luke Lord, 26, was sentenced on Friday in Sydney's District Court to 10 years' imprisonment with a non-parole period of six years for molesting 12 boys aged between six and 11.
The offences occurred from 2009, when he was first hired by the YMCA in southern Sydney, up until the day he was stood down in September 2011.
"I find it hard to believe they don't check references," the father of the boy who was Lord's main target told AAP.
The father agreed that if the YMCA had looked into Lord's employment record, it might have been more alert to warning signs he was grooming boys.
"It's like any criminal," said the man.
"He can be a drug dealer and sell drugs for 20 years before you get caught."
Lord worked in before- and after-school programs and in a YMCA creche and found private babysitting clients through his job.
Some of the abuse happened on bus trips to and from YMCA daytime activities and at YMCA events.
YMCA state chief executive Phillip Hare told AAP three times in an interview on January 10 that no one had checked any references before hiring Lord. He also said it wasn't a practice of the YMCA.
But a week later, two other YMCA representatives said two references in relation to Lord's babysitting work had been checked, although they gave no further details.
Mr Hare said the YMCA learned later that Lord had been dismissed as a camp counsellor in the United States over an allegation of similar behaviour.
Lord listed the US camp job on his resume but did not specify where he had worked and did not provide contact information for the employer, the YMCA later told AAP.
Mr Hare also said no references were checked in relation to Lord's babysitting experience, the only Australian employment listed on his resume, and it was not necessarily practice to make calls to referees.
"No, we would not necessarily ring," Mr Hare told AAP.
"We wouldn't necessarily ring randomly because even that tends to be generally a breach of confidence.
"You need to say to people, 'Who are the referees?' and then you provide referees. We wouldn't do that."
Hours after Friday's court proceedings, a letter was sent to about 600 YMCA parents that included the same information. It was issued by Mr Hare who was on leave at the time.
"They're just covering their own bases, aren't they?" another father of a young victim told AAP.
When contacted on Tuesday, the YMCA declined to explain the backflip and why it wasn't suspicious about Lord's US employment, about which he gave scant information and had no referees.
But a YMCA spokesman said the organisation was standing by its statements that two references were checked in relation to Lord's employment in Australia and that the organisation did check references from referees in the country.
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