The Man Cave’s CEO Ben Vasiliou has confirmed details of an incident in which two students at Trinity Grammar School in Kew were exposed to pornographic content during a workshop run by the youth mental health charity, prompting a policy overhaul and internal review.
The incident occurred on May 7 during a program delivered by The Man Cave at Trinity Grammar, where two Year 9 students were exposed to explicit imagery on a staff member’s personal phone during a workshop break.
Vasiliou said: “There was an incident where two students saw inappropriate images on a hand-held device from a TMC employee. The material was on the personal device of a TMC staff member and seen by the two students at the start of a break.”
“We are absolutely sorry this has occurred, and hold ourselves accountable for the incident,” he added.
According to an investigation conducted alongside the school, the exposure occurred after students approached the staff member and commented that he resembled a famous soccer player.
The staff member then used a mobile phone, also used during the workshop to play music, to search for the athlete via Ecosia, a Microsoft Bing-powered search engine.
After a phonetic spelling error in the search, results initially appeared normal, but clicking the images tab produced explicit pornographic content.
The students, who were viewing the screen, were exposed to the top four pornographic image results for approximately one to two seconds before the device was removed.
Vasiliou said the incident was reported by both the staff member and The Man Cave, and an investigation found “no intentional exposure to harmful images.” However, he added, “the incident still occurred, whether intentional or not,” and confirmed performance management action was taken.
“This included retraining and performance coaching,” he said.
Following the incident, Vasiliou said The Man Cave has updated its policies on digital device use for staff in schools: “Moving forward, no young person will ever see the screen of any of our staff while the phone is connected to the internet.”
He added, “We want to be clear we are not hiding from the fact this has happened and we stand by the integrity of our processes, management and communications internally and with the school. We also want it to be clear this was not content the staff member had stored anywhere on their phone. This was a genuine mistake, but one that should have never occurred.”
A Trinity Grammar spokesperson confirmed the exposure of two Year 9 students and said families had been informed, adding that the school expressed “significant concern” about The Man Cave’s processes and briefing procedures.
The spokesperson said, “The Man Cave acknowledged the seriousness of the matter and apologised for the incident. We continue to recognise their good intent and important work over a long period.”
Source: The Australian.
