Child abuse victim unprepared for police questioning, says mother The excited eight-year-old thought he was going to McDonald's for a treat. But his mother took him instead to Hurstville Police Station. There he was taken from her and interviewed by police for two hours about being sexually abused by his babysitter, the since-jailed childcare worker Jonathan Lord, while she sat outside crying. She told the child sex abuse Royal Commission it was a "horrific experience" for which they were unprepared. She'd taken seriously the advice of a detective not to talk to her son about his abuse because it could "interfere with the evidence." Her son had told her the babysitter Lord had abused him every Saturday for more than a year while she was out at work. So she was "devastated" when the abuser faced only one charge in relation to her son, because in the interview her son had been able to specify only one date when the abuse occurred. This she blamed on his lack of preparation for it. The Royal Commission has been told of at least nine boys aged from six to 11 who were sexually abused by Lord in YMCA childcare centres around Caringbah where Lord worked from 2009 until 2011. The YMCA has acknowledged the hurt and harm not only to the boys but to their parents. Mothers have told of their grief and confusion not just at learning what happened to their sons but in trying to protect them while navigating the nightmarish bureaucratic aftermath. One mother said she could not understand how Lord could have performed oral sex on her son in a bus on the way to a vacation care excursion while her daughter, his sister, sat beside them. Her son, referred to in the hearings as AH, has Asberger's Syndrome, is on the Autism spectrum and finds it difficult to make friends. Within a week of making his statement to police about the abuse, AH was suspended from school for aggressive behaviour, even though the principal had been informed of the abuse, she said. She denied the suggestion that the principal had not been informed of the abuse at the time of the suspension. YMCA NSW deeply regretted the incidents giving rise to the hearing and extended its deepest sympathies to the victims and their families, said Phillip Hare, its chief executive officer outside the hearing. He emphasised the organisation "has no history of child sexual abuse cover up" and had acted immediately to remove Mr Lord from contact with children when it became aware of the allegations. Gregory Sirtes, SC, appearing for the YMCA, NSW said the fact that Lord was able to "infiltrate" an organisation with "industry-leading practices" and win the trust of co-workers and parents demonstrated the need for better training of staff across the childcare sector to identify grooming behaviour. Lord was jailed last November for 10 years with six years non-parole on 11 counts of aggravated indecent assault on a person under 16 and two counts of sexual intercourse with a child under 10 and under authority.