Former detective releases book to educate parents on child abuse

These are the words of former detective, specialist child interviewer Kristi McVee who will be publishing a book to educate and empower parents on the warning signs for abuse.

Mrs McVee's journey into becoming a police officer and now an author started from her childhood.

With both of her parents and brother, she lived in Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, before being taken to Port Hedland in WA's Pilbara region, when her parents separated and father remarried.

She said it was a tumultuous upbringing which led her not finish school and get kicked out of home at the age of 16.

"My journey and experiences as a child created and solidified my need to help and fight for others and looking back, I see why I have always had some innate drive to help others and to fight for the underdog," she said.

Life slowly started working out for Mrs McVee she bought a house, married her husband Brad and had a daughter.

Mrs McVee decided to get into the police force when she was 27 and her daughter was two years old.

After going through the academy Mrs McVee was accepted into the force and she asked to be moved to Karratha where her husband was working.

Mrs McVee was in the force for a year when the opportunity arose to be trained as a specialist child interviewer.

"This course provided specific training in interviewing children, teenagers and mentally impaired persons on incidents that had happened to them personally or something they may have witnessed," she said.

"I was desperate to be helpful and this seemed like a way to be 'more' to those people in my community that I was serving.

"A small part of me now recognises and knows that I felt called to help kids in particular during my career because I needed someone to listen to and help me when I was a young girl and teenager and I wanted to be that for them.

"I definitely understood their pain more than they knew."

She spent four years in the Pilbara and then Mrs McVee was accepted to become a detective in Perth.

"I had a young daughter and I couldn't imagine anyone hurting my child so I became protective of all kids," she said.

"The job does change you and your view on the world."

"I was overly cautious, the statistics are 90 per cent of children are abused by someone they know. One in three girls and one in seven boys - the stats don't lie."

Mrs McVee worked in the child abuse squad in Perth where she was assigned to an operation investigating institutionalised historical child sexual abuse.

During her time in Perth, she did move out of the child abuse squad and into a "normal detective" role before deciding to move the family to Bunbury, south of Perth, for a country lifestyle.

"It was during that period whilst investigating those files that I really saw the devastation and impact of child abuse, child sexual abuse and neglect as I spoke with the victims and witnesses of these cases," she said.

While in Bunbury Mrs McVee would not only interview children who were potential abuse victims, she would also manage people who were on the child sex offence register.

From her training and experience, Mrs McVee was able to see patterns in behaviour when it came to the child sex offenders.

"They look for vulnerable children and or families or kids that aren't confident or parents who are too busy to take them places," she said.

"If it's a family member [the offender] its about building trust and respect with the parent.

"If its a parent themselves its getting them alone more regularly.

"They are secretive over their devices, like phone and computers and doing very similar things all the time."

Mrs McVee has provided these tips in her book as "red flags" for parents to look out for.

"Everything I put in the book is my experience, everything is on my behalf, I say I'm not parenting expert or a psychologist - this is just my experience," she said.

During what was Mrs McVee's last year in the force, she was diagnosed with anxiety.

"It wasn't treated properly," she said.

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"I took stress leave and reduced hours but it wasn't enough to help and it manifested into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)."

Mrs McVee found herself having panic attacks before going to work and some times even having sick days due to her anxiety.

"I thought I was weak because of it," she said.

The symptoms did not go away when Mrs McVee left the force, she said she had days where she couldn't leave the house, she would get heart palpitations when she heard sirens and she would replay things in her head before she went to sleep.

"I'm a visual person so when someone tells me a story, I was visualising it, so I was vicariously traumatised by what I was being told," she said.

"Recently I had a recurrence where I was seeing all the dead bodies I had seen."

It took Mrs McVee around two years to write the book that she finished in December 2021.

"Writing the book helped a lot, I got a lot off my chest," she said.

"My life's mission now is to ensure people know what I know.

"I had cases where parents would have no idea what happened to their child because they didn't know the warning signs."

Mrs McVee's book 'Operation KidSafe - A detectives guide to child abuse prevention' has information about peer based abuse and bullying, online abuse, grooming and consent.

She said the book also had a section of 'What to do if.....'.

"Education and empowerment is what we need," she said.

"People need to be aware, because it gives us the chance to change things."

Since retiring from the force Mrs McVee has also been travelling around WA speaking to schools about staying safe online and whilst using social media as well as teaching them about consent, the law, and their rights.

"I am hoping that some of our kids will feel empowered to speak up, take action and help their siblings and friends by educating them also," she said.

Mrs McVee's self published book will be released in mid July and the City of Bunbury will be hosting a launch on August 13.

Pre-orders is available at cape-au.com.