National Politics...

Systemic abuse of children is not just an indigenous problem…

By Cliff Baxter

If the Australian government decided to "stamp out systemic child abuse" by carrying out compulsory vaginal, anal and other physical examinations of all Catholic schoolchildren aged under sixteen years what would be the public response? Would Kevin Rudd applaud Mr Howard?

Yet that is the method the Government intends to apply through emergency winter legislation to indigenous people in the Northern Territory and, perhaps, in all Australian States.

It's very convenient for those who think Aussie aboriginal people are savages who mistreat their children. In my experience if Aboriginal parents have any faults it is that they cannot refuse the slightest demand from their little ones at the supermarket.

Out the window go human rights, land councils, land rights, moves towards self-government. It's the blackening of the black. Black drunks are the cause of everything. Why they are drunk is irrelevant. Do they need rehab centres and employment opportunities in remote areas? No we need more employed white employees therefore our "crackdown on systemic abuse".

If they don't play ball we know what to do with them.

I wonder, too, about the possible reaction if it was thought good to deduct social benefits from white Irish Australians who abuse or neglect their families because of their thirst for Guinness, beer, whiskey, the TAB and poker machines?

Would society applaud Mr Howard and Mr Rudd, as the white children were moved to other areas to prevent their "systemic abuse"?

No racial basis for such behaviours…

Anybody who has knowledge of sexual abuse and neglect of children knows that there is no racial basis for such behaviours. In fact, while it is true that gross poverty can result in abuse, it is also true that respectable white people - judges, schoolteachers, professionals, mayors - can misuse their power to gloat over computerized paedophilia images and then act it out with a helpless victim. The Government says it is going to crack down not only on booze but on porno stuff in indigenous communities. I wonder how many have a computer?

This is not to deny that poverty, injustice and stupid and non-humanistic policies have created terrible conditions in remote communities with predictable, terrible results.

The Government, however, in its planned pre-election "crackdown" has branded our indigenous people with an indelible tag of being savages who abuse their children.

Aboriginal people are following Catholics in being smeared. But unlike Catholics they do not have cardinals, bishops, lawyers and politicians to defend their reputation. As for the indigenous perpetrators they are not going to be transferred or sent overseas like so many of our priests..

It's part of a simple diversionary pre-election tactic. The children overboard again! Refugees throw their children into the sea. Aboriginal people abuse their children. Our money is being wasted on them. Crack down on them, hard! Let's get tough!

We must stop this kind of deceptive political strategy.

Thinking about Mr. Howard's new pre-election term "systemic abuse" I thought of the media rush that brought it about. It started on LateLine if you remember, where the man in the mask turned out to be one of the Government's employees, followed by many newspaper headlines.

But other headlines have not just been about black Australians. Take this one from CathNews:

A psychologist formerly employed by the Australasian St John of God brothers has called for the order to be closed down, accusing it of being in a state of denial over abuse allegations.

Stuff.co.nz reports that former complaints manager for the brothers, Michelle Mulvihill, a psychologist and former nun, has blown the whistle on the order's crisis, after quitting as head of its professional standards committee for nine years.

"My impression is that there is a culture of collusion inside the province which is deeply ingrained, and which makes it almost impossible for the truth about these matters to be dealt with."

Systemic abuse? Will we pack them off and reduce their incomes while we carry out anal and vaginal tests on their clients aged under sixteen?

Go the long list on the Web of priestly sexual abusers of the young. Hey, most of them bear Irish names! Does that mean that paedophilia can be racist, or cultural? Of course not.

Sexual abuse of children can happen anywhere.

But aren't we defending "Australian values", that description so beloved of our Prime Minister?

This week's edition of The Irish Echo carries on its front page this story by Markham Nolan:

"A young Irish mother has told the Irish Echo her story of sexual abuse and police inaction that has torn her family apart.

"'Sinead' moved from Ireland to Australia to give her three-year-old son a better life. However, not long after they arrived he was apparently molested and raped by his Australian step-grandfather."

On page 8 of the same edition of The Echo there's a terrible story of 63-year-old Irish priest, Father Jeremiah McGrath who was jailed for five years for giving thousands of pounds to assist a notorious paedophile, Billy Adams, 38, "groom" a twelve-year-old girl for sex by showering her with presents. Adams got life in jail.

The priest's future will be determined by his order, the St Patrick's Missionary Society. How "systemic" is that?

Systemic abuse of children is not confined to aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. Except, perhaps, at election time?

Postscriptum:

I am not saying that there is not a problem in remote Aboriginal communities. That is established. The use of draconian measures, the bringing in of more white "professionals" without curative measures and changing the economic and employment structures will not work. At the moment even jobs such as cleaners often go to non-indigenous people. More disturbing is that it has been established that some of the white professionals are closet paedophiles who target the vulnerable, as they do elsewhere. I'm sure they'd love to do vaginal and anal examinations and give "comfort" to the families of indigenous alcoholics. There's a sad history of self-proclaimed saviours being perpetrators and predators. My point is that there is a huge range of sexual abuse, and that includes white collar professionals at home on their computers trying to seduce fourteen year olds.

Non-indigenous paedophiles including school principals and builders, screen pornography to young Aboriginal males and give them alcohol on condition they bring young children to viewings, says Professor Judy Atkinson, prominent indigenous academic.

These men who introduced pornography to towns and remote Aboriginal communities were regarded as authority figures and had a strong influence, she told The Sydney Morning Herald's Larry Schwartz.

"Some of them choose to work in our communities because they know they'll have access to kids," said the professor, who is Director of the Gnibi College of Indigenous Peoples at Southern Cross University in Lismore.

She said the Federal Government's response was a "knee-jerk...military response" and likened it to invading Iraq without considering a subsequent peace process.

Naomi Myers, of Redfern's Aboriginal medical Service told The Herald's Debra Jobson Aboriginal Australians were being used in a "desperate game of wedge politics where the prize is electoral success."

She has written to the Government calling for a royal commission into the scandal of successive governments diverting funds earmarked for Aboriginal programs to general community projects and infrastructure.

This was exposed by a federally-funded review in 1980 in the Northern Territory and has continued nationwide.

The dismantled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission had its funding to tackle child abuse cut after it campaigned for a decade for more money, as the indigenous activist Mick Dodson pointed out four years ago.

Aboriginal people, she said, were regularly "spoken to with contempt, hectored. lectured at and treated as inferiors of lesser intelligence whose ideas are to be dismissed."

DISCLOSURE: Catholica Australia has a commercial arrangement
with The Irish Echo for the cross promotion of our publications to our respective readerships

Cliff Baxter is a highly awarded journalist with a lifetime experience gained on the principal Australian secular newspapers, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The Catholic Weekly.

We welcome your thoughts in response to this review in our forum.

Cliff Baxter can be contacted at: Cliff Baxter <cliffbaxter@catholica.com.au>

©2007 Clifford Baxter

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