Emma Louise Morton (right) approaches the ACT Courts for her sentencing hearing on Tuesday. Photo: Albert McKnight.
Staff at a not-for-profit childcare centre put their trust in their long-time director before she betrayed them and her community by stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from it, a court has heard.
Earlier this year, Emma Louise Morton admitted stealing almost $306,000 from the Weston Creek Children’s Centre in southern Canberra between March 2020 and February 2021.
By the time of her arrest, she had spent two decades working as the centre’s director.
During her sentencing hearing on Tuesday (14 October), centre employee Kylie Goodwin said she had seen Morton’s “unusual spending of centre funds” and then went to police to protect her workplace, its 35 staff and the hundreds of families who trusted them with their children over the years.
“Over time, I questioned Emma on several occasions about unusual spending, only to be met with blatant lies. She made me feel I was in the wrong for even asking – gaslighting me into doubting my own concerns,” Ms Goodwin told the ACT Supreme Court.
“To later learn that someone in a position of trust and responsibility was prioritising personal greed over the well-being of all of us, in particular children, was devastating.
“Speaking up came at a personal cost, but I knew staying silent would have led to something far worse.”
Ms Goodwin said she, centre staff and its families had all placed their trust in Morton, but by stealing hundreds of times she “broke the law and betrayed our trust over and over again”.
“Her actions have left a huge negative impact on me and the centre, which we are still dealing with reputationally and financially to this day,” she said.
Morton was arrested in 2021, spent about two weeks in custody before she was granted bail and eventually faced over 100 charges when she was committed to the Supreme Court two years later.
After spending years fighting her charges, she pleaded guilty to three counts of obtaining property by deception in May 2025.
On Tuesday (14 October), prosecutor Morgan Howe argued Morton’s crimes were an egregious breach of trust due to her position as director of a not-for-profit preschool.
He also argued it had been repeated offending that occurred over a long time, involved a very substantial sum of stolen money and said Morton hadn’t shown remorse or insight.
Emma Louise Morton (right) leaves court after pleading guilty earlier this year. Photo: Albert McKnight.
Mr Howe said that when she was discussing two of her charges with the author of a pre-sentence report, she said in hindsight she may have followed incorrect processes and procedures, which she had been unaware of at the time.
But by her guilty plea, she admitted knowing her conduct was dishonest, the prosecutor argued.
Morton’s barrister, Sam Pararajasingham SC, said the third charge, which involved $130,000, related to three transactions his client made into an account she controlled before leaving the money there and never using it.
He argued this crime was a misguided attempt to address the risks that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr Pararajasingham said to understand his client and her offences, the court had to consider what was happening in her life in the lead-up to her crimes.
He ran through the stress and traumatic experiences she faced during the 2010s, which included family tragedies and her diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, before she was admitted to a psychiatric unit for a month in January 2020.
When she was discharged that February, she didn’t receive the appropriate level of care she needed due to the onset of the COVID pandemic, the barrister said. Her offences then began in March 2020.
Mr Pararajasingham said much of his client’s conduct was self-defeating, as detection was inevitable.
He also said she agreed to return the stolen money to Projects on Parkinson, the organisation that trades as the Weston Creek Children’s Centre.
He asked for his client to be handed an intensive corrections order, which is a type of community-based sentence, while Mr Howe argued that a sentence without a period of full-time imprisonment would be inadequate.
Justice Belinda Baker said she would reserve her sentence for Morton, who is aged in her early 50s, and hand it down at a future date.
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