An accused childcare rapist took advantage of the fact he could have close contact with children, and did not need to take them to a secluded area because this would have raised suspicions, the prosecution told a jury as his trial concluded.
Joshua James Capps pleaded not guilty to one count of rape and three counts of indecent treatment of a child, which he allegedly committed while working as an educator at a C&K centre in Brisbane’s north.
Capps took the stand on Wednesday, where he denied each of the allegations against him, which included that he raped one boy, and touched tongues with children at the Geebung centre in 2023.
A mother of one of the alleged victims, a three-year-old boy, told the trial she walked in on Capps crouching in front of another child and their tongues were poking out, touching each other. Capps had played a game called “doctors” with several children, the trial heard.
The prosecution alleged Capps took advantage of the fact it was normal for educators to have physical contact with children.
In her closing submissions, Crown Prosecutor Arielle Spiteri told the jury it was plausible that Capps could have been doing something innocuous with the children when he committed the offending.
Spiteri said Capps under his evidence on Wednesday accepted other educators in the vicinity were preoccupied.
“He agreed, in fact, he said ‘we don’t watch each other’. That was accepted very frankly,” she said.
“The defence suggested that it would be more likely someone would do these things in somewhere other than the open space … but what you might think is that Mr Capps would be drawing attention to himself if he led a child to a secluded area.
“So what he’s done is, he has used, in my submission, the opportunity available to him to commit these offences, because we know that it’s entirely normal for educators and children to interact closely, to touch the children, to be at face height.”
Spiteri reminded the jury that crimes could be committed in the vicinity of CCTV. Earlier, an investigating officer told the court much of the footage recovered from the centre was corrupted, and police were unable to retrieve it. Capps told the court he paid to have some of the footage fixed because he believed it would exonerate him.
“I suggest that Mr Capps committed these offences also under the guise of doing something innocuous, so these things would have just looked like a normal interaction between an educator and child,” Spiteri said.
“You might think that it’s inconceivable that someone, let alone a childcare educator, would engage in such brazen acts in an open space, in close proximity of others, but the reality is these things really do happen in our society.
“We know that child sex offenders often act brazen because children do not have the capacity to understand or appreciate the seriousness of situations they might find themselves in.
“An example of this is that the complainant children clearly enjoying playing a game with doctors.”
Spiteri said the three-year-old boy’s mother’s memory of seeing Capps touch tongues with another child was clear. Spiteri said the mother’s discussions with her son were the first non-leading disclosures of sexual abuse, and when he spoke about being anally penetrated it was in circumstances where he offered the information of his own volition.
Spiteri referred to how the alleged victim had requested to read a book named ‘My Body, My Rules’ every night for about a month before Capps was detected. Spiteri said this may be suggestive of him trying to work out what had happened to him.
She said that boy also denied in his police interview that he had touched tongues with Capps.
In his closing submissions, barrister Jack Kennedy told the jury while the world was acutely aware of sexual offending, this was not the case for his client, who was not guilty of the charges.
Kennedy said his client chose to give evidence, and expose himself to cross-examination.
“He could’ve sat in the dock and said nothing, but he chose to take the stand,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy spoke of the three-year-old boy’s mother, who he described as loving and who was concerned about a male educator.
“Clearly [the alleged victim] is not being truthful in what he says … I don’t submit that he’s lying because the fact is he’s just too young to properly understand the gravity of the allegations he’s making,” he said.
“He’s read the book ‘My Body, My Rules’ with his mother … his mother has seen the footage … you cannot see Mr Capps touch tongues with any child. He is an educator, a trained educator who went down to the child’s level.”
He said the alleged offending happened when there were numerous educators walking around in an open environment, and the building had glass doors.
Kennedy questioned how no one could have seen the alleged incidents in such a brazen location.
The trial continues.
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