By Nicole Precel

Copyright smh

Education Department inspectors, backed by Victoria Police, arrived at the Kings Park home of Xuan Luu in November 2019 to find the woman with 14 children aged five or younger, including a baby, in her care and one of the children tethered by her ankle to a cot.

“When questioned why she had tied the child to the bed, the accused states, ‘it is how to control them’, ‘stop them from damaging my things’, ‘to control children’; and ‘to prevent children from biting other children’,” the court documents state.

Officers noted other tethers attached to furniture, including the leg of a cot and a coffee table. Two children were inside cots and were tethered to the walls, and the address had no facilities for changing nappies.

A plea summary document to the court in February last year, five years after the raid, states that (through an interpreter) Luu said she restrained children for “just a little while” and that she “just tied them very loosely”.