Why parents are afraid to walk their children to school in this Sydney suburb
Parents are tired of having to walk their children to primary school every day, only to hide their eyes from the obscene adult shops that line the streets.
Every morning hundreds of parents take their children to school, but for those whose children attend Liverpool Public Primary School in Sydney’s south-west, the journey is a little less than pleasant.
Along the path to the school is a shopping street lined with shops that aren’t exactly child-friendly, including massage parlors, adult shops and a methadone clinic.
“As soon as I got my kids into this school, I noticed them right away,” one concerned parent told A Current Affair on Thursday evening.
A grandmother, who has been taking her children and grandchildren to the same primary school for forty years, is fed up with exposing young children to such obscene shops every morning.
“It’s not fun walking up and down here,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a good place for them to have brothels… I think they should be somewhere else.”
It’s a difficult topic to discuss when children bring it up on the way to school.
“If they ask, ‘What kind of store is that, Mom?’, what should I say?” asked another mother. “Actually, I don’t know.”
Parents have complained about the string of adult shops near Liverpool Public Primary School in Sydney’s south-west (Photo from A Current Affair)
Residents have called for the shops to close. Image: A current case
Despite outrage from locals and demands to close the obscene shops, Liverpool Mayor Ned Mannoun said his “hands are tied” and responsibility falls on the lap of the state government.
Legislation passed in 2008 banned all seedy establishments from the area, but businesses that had opened and operated there before the ban have the legal right to remain.
“We’ve been trying to get rid of them for ages,” the mayor told the Channel Nine programme.
“We need the state government to change the legislation to ensure those buildings and those uses are reassessed over time.”
Speaking to NewsWire, a spokesperson for the NSW Department of Education said that while they can fight against the opening of a pub around the corner from a primary school, there is nothing they can do about the adult shops in the area.
Parents and grandparents are ashamed when they walk past the shops with their children. Image: A current case
There are endless obscene shops in the area. Image: A current case