Childcare worker Edwina Ling sentenced to four years' jail for assaulting toddlers
Edwina Ling pleaded guilty to more than 80 counts of assault involving three toddlers. (Supplied)
In short:
Edwina Amy Ling, 48, was sentenced to four years' jail with a non-parole period of one year.
Ling pleaded guilty to 80 counts of common assault and two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm.
The offending involved three toddlers at Injinoo Child Care Centre between August and September 2024.
A Queensland childcare worker has been jailed for four years after pleading guilty to more than 80 counts of assault involving three young children.
Warning: This story contains descriptions of child abuse
Edwina Amy Ling, 48, pleaded guilty to 80 counts of common assault and two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm in Cairns District Court on Wednesday.
The court heard Ling's offending involved three children aged between 13 months and two-and-a-half years.
The court heard she carried out the physical abuse inside a baby room at Injinoo Child Care Centre in remote Far North Queensland between August 30 and September 5, 2024.
District Court Judge Dean Morzone KC described Ling's offending as "monstrous, cruel and sadistic" and "a gross breach of trust".
Judge Morzone sentenced Ling to four years' jail with a non-parole period of one year.
Injinoo Childcare Centre operated outside the National Quality Framework because it received direct federal government funding. (Supplied)
CCTV vision was played to the court showing Ling grabbing a 13-month-old boy by the neck and head, repeatedly smothering his face with a cot mattress and pillow, pulling his head back, hitting him on the head, putting her foot on his face and kicking him across the floor.
Vision played to the court also showed Ling at various times shaking the child, throwing him onto a beanbag, lifting him by one arm, mock punching near his face, throwing a playpen at him, and forcefully pushing and throwing him down while he slept.
Ling had initially also been charged with torturing the child, but this charge was later dropped.
'We trusted that our son would be safe'
The parents of one of the children, who was 13 months old at the time of the assaults, told the ABC the ordeal had destroyed their trust in the childcare system.
The parents did not attend the sentencing but in an impact statement read out in court they said they felt betrayed by Ling, the childcare centre and the education department.
"We trusted that our son would be safe and cared for and he wasn't. We felt there was a lack of support given and failings within the childcare centre itself," they said in their statement.
"She [Edwina Ling] chose to physically abuse our child, and others, not once but multiple times over several days.
"She was entrusted with the care of the most vulnerable people in our community. Our son could not defend himself or tell us what was happening to him. She broke that trust."
They said her actions would forever impact them.
"Not a day has passed since this happened that we do not think about what happened and relive that traumatic time," they said.
Injinoo Child Care Centre was shut down by Queensland's Department of Education in August last year. (Supplied)
The childcare centre was exempt from the National Quality Framework, Australia's national system for regulating and assessing childcare, because it received direct federal government funding.
As a result, it was not assessed or rated against the national quality standards applied to most childcare centres and was instead regulated under Queensland's Education and Care Services Act.
It is the latest in a string of scandals engulfing Australia's childcare sector, where ABC Investigations has exposed systemic failures including repeated abuse, neglect, poor supervision and regulatory failure.
The revelations sparked national outrage and prompted state and federal governments to introduce new laws, stronger enforcement and new child protection measures.
But experts and families say far deeper systemic reform is still urgently needed.
Queensland's Early Childhood Regulatory Authority, which sits within the Department of Education, cancelled the provider's approval and closed the Injinoo Child Care Centre nearly a year after the assaults took place.
It also conducted an internal investigation, but the department is refusing to release the report publicly despite the family's requests to see it.
The cancellation action is subject to review in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT).
The court heard Edwina Ling was initially hired as a cook and a cleaner at the Injinoo Child Care Centre and within a few months was promoted to an educator in the baby room.
She was studying a certificate III in Child Care.