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Even as a teenager, Joshua Brown knew his future lay in childcare. In his final three years of high school, he was already studying early childhood education at TAFE, fast-tracking his path to a job only weeks after graduation.
Working at 20 childcare centres across Melbourne, Brown apparently attracted no notice from regulators for almost a decade until he was charged with 70 counts of child sex abuse, including rape, this year.
The charges against childcare worker Joshua Brown, 26, were revealed on Tuesday after a suppression order was lifted.
When police raided the 26-year-old’s home in Point Cook in May, he had a valid working with children check and no criminal record.
Minutes down the road from his house were his old Catholic schools, as well as the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre, where it’s alleged he abused at least eight babies and toddlers and contaminated children’s food with bodily fluids.
Brown’s former classmates at Emmanuel College were shocked when the news broke on Tuesday. They described a “loner” in high school with few friends but no obvious concerns.
Few people wanted to comment, and Brown’s social media presence appeared to have been wiped clean since his arrest in May.
Brown grew up in Point Cook and remained in the area in a rented home which he shared with a male housemate and a cat, which is now sitting vacant. Nearby were at least five of the childcare centres where he worked, though authorities are still scrambling to update his full employment history, after this masthead revealed it was wider than first released publicly to families.
Brown was easily recognisable to parents for his distinctive Celtic arm tattoos and ginger-coloured hair, which he often dyed different colours. Some families spoke of his easy laughter. He worked at large childcare chains G8 Education and Affinity Education and often did short-stint relief work at other centres.
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His mother, Tracey Brown, is the former prison guard named in the inquest into the preventable death of Indigenous woman Veronica Nelson, after Brown admitted she had lied about calling a nurse as Nelson was dying in a prison cell. She could not be reached for comment.
Today her son is in a secure remand cell in Melbourne as he awaits a court hearing in September.
On Wednesday, the current principal of Emmanuel, Janine Biggin, wrote to families “with a heavy heart” confirming Brown was an alumnus, graduating in 2016.
“Although [he] has had no connection to our school for several years, like you, we are deeply disturbed by these allegations,” she wrote in an email seen by this masthead.
Detectives were led to Brown’s door as a major sex crime investigation got underway in May.
They had uncovered a cache of child abuse material allegedly linked to Brown and the childcare centre where he worked while they were investigating the rape of a teenage boy in Hoppers Crossing in a separate case the month before.
The man accused of that assault, Melbourne waste management worker Michael Simon Wilson, 36, does not work in childcare but has been charged with 40 counts of child abuse during the wider investigation, as first revealed by this masthead on Wednesday. He will face court the same day as Brown.
Alleged rapist Michael Wilson was an active member of a hobby club.
The revelations about Brown have mobilised an unprecedented police and Health Department response as officials raced to identify victims, inform affected families and launch a large child-testing regimen. Sex crimes detectives have now focused their attention on Brown’s time at a childcare centre in Essendon, where they are investigating whether further abuse may have occurred.
Brown and Wilson are known to each other, but their exact connection is still unclear.
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Both lived and grew up in the western suburbs, where Wilson was an active member of an amateur radio club until his abrupt departure two months ago. Before that, he had attended regular committee meetings and organised local events.
Several of Wilson’s friends and family contacted by The Age were unaware he had been arrested.
Wilson lived alone but had been active on dating websites, on which he spoke of recently leaving a long-term relationship, and enjoyed gaming and listening to artists such as Machine Gun Kelly and Eminem.
One former colleague from Wilson’s time working in waste management described him as “alright”.
On Tuesday, Victoria Police took the rare step of naming Brown to ensure parents were informed about the situation, but have said they cannot comment further on the Wilson case.
No other childcare workers are suspected of being involved in Brown’s alleged abuse, and police have said they did not believe abuse took place at all centres where Brown worked.
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