Hippy spiritual groups to the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Salvation Army, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Uniting Church, Yeshiva schools in Melbourne and Sydney, Scouts Australia, disability service providers, the Australian Defence Force, the YMCA, hospitals, orphanages, sporting and artistic organisations, government and non-government schools have all been in the gun over the last four years.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse established in 2013 has ceased its public hearings. Its final report will be presented to the federal government in December.
We have lost a great deal of focus as events have unfolded. The media reporting has caused many of the problems, rattling the skeletons of an old unloved and unlovable sectarian Australia and obsessed with gotcha moments as if victims’ pain can only find some expression when a big name comes to grief in a public hearing.
In the wake of the Commission’s investigations, offenders certainly should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and those who have covered up, moving the offenders on to new groups of unsuspecting children, should be publicly shamed.
Full column here.
Okay all you local milk people, time to get your footy tips in. Blessed are the cheese makers.
Gosh. Reading The Age this morning reveals that the longterm partner of the woman that owns a King Street nightclub is a senior drugs officer in the Victorian Police force.
Ouch, not pointing a finger, but that seems a rather unusual conflict of interests? Perception is everything.
Yesterday a call for 78 more climate scientists and now this! This is why people are reluctant about this stuff. There’s money to be made and it ain’t from big oil!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/temperatures-plunge-after-bureau-orders-weather-station-fix/news-story/9230dd914ac532fa735700ffc7799203
Nice work, Johannes. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Absolutely brilliant on so many levels Milton.
If Bill Leak isn’t looking down from heaven, laughing his arse off, it could only be he’s busy doing god’s portrait.
I could only wish Johannes might take up where his dad left off
He’s a bright bloke and a very talented artist. His old man would be very proud of him. He always was but perhaps a bit more now.
A blinder from Jack covering all of the bases over the Wall. In my 35yrs in the job I saw only a couple of instances of kiddy fiddling. They were dealt with ever so swiftly and the cops informed. By that, I mean if there were only a suggestion of improper conduct the teacher would be instantly removed-not even allowed to finish the day. Actually one was my boss. Half way through the day the boss suddenly ‘disappeared’ frogmarched out of the school by a group of plain closed dudes. The sounds of silence were blaring!That said, the teacher who was regularly raping a boy from my school in the 60’s has still not been mentioned (may be dead) and the person concerned has lived out his life as a recluse. The school has never made the news either.
Malcolm calling a special meeting eh. Wonder if he will catch them all out and call a spill himself (before the Hard Right can marshal its forces) to see if the recalcitrants have the guts to replace him? If he wins he could start afresh and ditch the secret deal with the Un Nationals. Mad Barnaby wanted a combined meeting…maybe that is why Malcolm wanted just his Looters present if he was thinking of a spill….just a thought.
Dogs:-done like Souths. Poor Dez. Like Souths:-Madge too
BRADMAN:- Solved…well sort of. The hate will never go until the present board have gone and today’s cricket stars have moved on.
The big difference with one, just the one, of those many institutions you have referenced, is that it has a self-appointed licence to mediate between God and ordinary mortals. With the police, if a cop turns out to be bad, evidence presented for previous convictions can be objectively re-examined. In the case of some priestly functions, previous tasks will include taking confessions and administering sacraments. I’m guessing that, unless canon law is explicit, none of those intercessions can be negated (because the mediator was crooked at heart), for the sake of the constituents. In other words, there seems to be a clear distinction between actions performed by a person (priest) dressed in vestments and criminal actions committed by the very same person under his own motivations. However wicked a priest may have been, though, the hierarchy is bound to protect & preserve all the “good” stuff done under the aegis of the organisation. Since a person cannot be split in two, the hierarchy has a pretty good line of defense.
I think that’s the cardinal difference between potential for adequate penalties for failure of oversight within & outside of some religious organisations. Maybe, while the former has built-in protection of malefactors, it’s that much more difficult to prosecute “cover-up” in the cases of the others.
Another good article on this unpleasant matter, Jack. With teachers, do they have to report it directly to the police, or to the Principal?
To the principal but if the principal failed to report, the teacher should.
Education Qld have a pretty strict regime in place. Not sure about the other states.
Maybe that protocol should change, and for obvious reasons? No doubt a tricky matter, especially if a teacher only suspects illegal activity. And some suspicions are informed by less than rational reasons, or worse.
I’d suggest either direct reporting to the police, or a combined reporting to the principal and education qld, or whoever.
On the plus side I feel the high profile, and awareness of institutional sexual abuse of minors, will be greatly reducing the numbers of our youth from such depravity.
You nailed it there Milton. I have it on very good authority that sometimes a case is agonised over because they just aren’t sure. Damned if you do…
Common sense request JTI and one I thought may be taken up in the final report. You would think a provision whereby a person who didn’t report, knowingly put others at risk, would be a reasonable circumstance of aggravation. You could even change the onus of proof to lay with the person charged to prove they didn’t put others at risk. Lawyers hate provisions like those though and our AG’s departments are of course filled with Lawyers.
I don’t think there needs to be great changes to law. From a policing point of view, failing to report would be a relatively straightforward exercise. What needs to change is the penalty.