When the former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, announced the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, she said that the decision to call the unprecedented national inquiry had been prompted by "too many revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil."
The conviction expressed by Gillard and commonly presented in media coverage is that the commission marks a new epoch in Australian life that will finally "break the silence" surrounding child sexual abuse. By justly condemning the mishandling of sexual abuse of children by faith-based and other organisations, honest and open modern Australia is purported to have learned from the mistakes of deceitful and repressed old Australia, which for too long had turned a blind eye to the abuse of children inside churches and other organisations.
The belief the royal commission will end the silence about child sexual abuse overlooks key dimensions of the multifaceted scourge of child sexual abuse.
The commission's restrictive terms of reference (which only authorise an inquiry into how institutions respond to child sexual abuse) ignores the circumstances in which the vast majority of child sexual abuse occurs. In an estimated 70% to 80% of child sexual abuse cases, there is "a familial relationship between the child victim and the offender."
The limited scope of the royal commission is symptomatic of the wider gaps and silences in the national conversation about children and sexual abuse. Delving deeper than institutional abuse reveals a problem with the way the issue of child abuse is framed and analysed in this country.
The well-established but under-publicised impact of the social changes of the last 40 years on the traditional family and child welfare is insufficiently acknowledged. In Australia, child abuse occurs disproportionately in non-traditional families. However, the over-representation of broken families, and the subject of family breakdown in general, does not receive the political, media and academic attention this major social issue warrants.
Moreover, the silence on the links between family structure and child sexual abuse is deafening. That the vast majority of child sexual abuse occurs within family settings obscures a larger and more significant truth: Children living in non-traditional families are far more likely to be sexually abused. Despite the evidence in the academic literature being "legion" and social scientists "disagree[ing] about details but not essentials," when the facts about family structure and risk of child sexual abuse are highlighted, the issue receives scant attention.
In September 2011, Professor Patrick Parkinson of the University of Sydney, one of Australia's leading experts on family law, entered the debate about family policy, advocating traditional social values. In a major report for the Australia Christian Lobby (ACL) on child welfare, he reported the links between the breakdown of the family and increased risk of harm to children. Among a range of measures demonstrating the adverse impact of family breakdown on children, he cited the numerous studies and statistics showing higher rates of child sexual abuse in non-traditional families. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Parkinson drew attention to the "harsh reality ... that children are much more at risk of sexual abuse from men who are not biologically related to them than from their own dads."
Some of the reactions to the ACL report were predictable. Proponents of the traditional family, such as federal Liberal MP Kevin Andrews, applauded the fearless, evidence-based discussion of family breakdown and adverse outcomes for children. Critics, such as Jane Stanley from the Council of Single Mothers and their Children (in a letter to The Australian newspaper), found the analysis to be simplistic because many separated and single-parent families produce well-adjusted children. Advocates of "marriage equality," such as gay rights activist Rodney Croome, even cited the findings to call for legalising homosexual and lesbian marriage to ensure that children of same-sex couples are raised by married parents.
Yet one would think that this dose of harsh reality delivered by an academic of Parkinson's stature would provoke stronger reactions. Child welfare advocates, along with select politicians and media outlets, might have been expected to call for "something" to be done to protect children at significantly greater risk of violation. In response, defenders of sole parenting in the welfare lobby and academia might have mounted the metaphorical barricades, given the authoritative connection between family structure and the risk of sexual victimisation.
However, Parkinson's article (and report) prompted neither outrage nor denial. The response to his sober and scholarly directing of attention to "how often" children are sexually abused in non-traditional families was silence. The facts were neither disputed nor acknowledged in the little public discussion that ensued; the report simply washed in and out of the public domain and left little trace on community attitudes.
The "new silence" about family breakdown and child sexual abuse is a troubling insight into contemporary social mores. The silence stems from the lasting influence on mainstream culture of the 1960s social revolution, which fundamentally altered the conventions governing marriage and the raising of children. The most significant social changes since the 1960s have been the introduction of "no fault" divorce and escalating rates of marriage breakdown; the collapse of the social stigmas forbidding sexual relations and cohabitation outside marriage; and increasing numbers of children born out of wedlock and living in single-parent households, mostly with mothers and often relying on government benefits.
Accompanying these social changes has been a shift in moral sentiment, which has seen "progressive" Western societies such as Australia cease to make collective moral judgments about good and bad behaviour. As a result, the negative social consequences of the social revolution are rarely criticised, and key social issues are insufficiently scrutinised, including the potentially harmful impact on children of adult behaviours such as divorce and having children out of wedlock.
Yet a large volume of evidence shows that the key non-judgemental idea the social revolution has popularised and elevated into an alleged marker of social progress and greater tolerance is wrong. The traditional family is not just one among many and equally valid and worthwhile family forms.
Decades of studies examining family structure and child outcomes have found that children who live in an intact family in which the biological mother and father are married derive, on average, modest but consistent educational, social, cognitive and behavioural benefits. Conversely, family breakdown and family non-formation have been found to be significantly associated, on average, with a range of adverse outcomes that persist into adulthood. Marriage, as the foundation of family life, seems to be in a child's best interests, while the alternative - raising children outside of intact two-parent married families - appears to compromise their care and socialisation.
The social sciences have repeatedly and consistently demonstrated that marriage makes a real difference, on average, to the welfare of children irrespective of class. Nevertheless, mainstream cultural gatekeepers in politics, the media and academia prefer to avert their eyes. The public discourse about family life and child welfare is self-censored, in effect, in compliance with politically correct attitudes towards family diversity, because of strong cultural resistance to a message that contradicts "progressive" social values.
This especially applies to the way the demonstrable risk that family breakdown poses to the sexual safety of children is resolutely ignored. Child sexual abuse is not fully and frankly discussed, and attempts to flag the issue, such as the 2011 Australian Christian Lobby report, end up disappearing into the ether, due to the gatekeeping role cultural elites play in policing debates on contentious social issues.
In hindsight, we are justifiably critical of the silences that in earlier times kept child sexual abuse a hidden problem. However, the belief - which has underpinned much of the response to the royal commission - that the community has moved on from repressive attitudes of earlier times that kept child sexual abuse a hidden problem, and that no subject is now off limits, is an overstatement. A comparable silence surrounding family breakdown and child welfare confronts us today, because the cultural politics intervene and trump the facts about family type and the risk of sexual abuse.
This means that not all dimensions of the child sexual abuse scourge are treated equally.
The terrible and widespread mishandling of child sexual abuse by Catholic and other churches has provided apparent proof that all traditional institutions and sources of moral authority are corrupt and hypocritical; these scandals have thus fitted neatly with the default countercultural values embraced since the 1960s social revolution by the majority of university-educated elites with culture-shaping positions in key institutions in politics, journalism and academia.
However, many politicians, journalists and academics who rightly criticise the failings of the churches have their own blind spot, and would prefer to discuss child sexual abuse in a context that supports rather than challenges the post-1960s "progressive" consensus. Criticism of the behaviour of culturally unfashionable religious organisations is thus combined with a reluctance to give prominence to culturally unfashionable, socially conservative issues.
The unwillingness to challenge the conventional, socially progressive attitudes that now constitute the established order is thus similar to the veil of silence that helped hide the crimes of paedophile priests.
Many paedophiles deliberately infiltrated the clergy to gain access to children and exploit the deferential attitudes towards traditional institutions like churches and authority figures like priests that were once the norm. Many got away with their crimes, and children who disclosed abuse were not believed because people struggled to accept that "dear father," that pillar of the established order, would interfere with little children.
Today, we still pay due deference to deeply held but erroneous values and do not deal with society the way it is, but the way we would prefer it to be. The mirage of moral tolerance, personal liberation, and family diversity is preferred to the reality of child harm. Inconvenient truths about the family and child welfare thus have little cultural salience, and the burden of our cultural angst is once again left to rest on abused children.
If we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, it is essential that the cultural politics are set aside and that we speak openly and honestly about contentious and controversial issues. Speaking honestly requires admitting that a major threat to the welfare of children stems from the breakdown of the traditional family.
The new silence will only be broken when cultural elites stop averting their eyes and reevaluate the progressive social values in which they have over-invested too much political and intellectual capital at the expense of the facts and the good of children.
Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. This is an edited extract from his new report, The New Silence: Family Breakdown and Child Sexual Abuse.
 |
| Ex-Prime Minister Julia Gillard |
The belief the royal commission will end the silence about child sexual abuse overlooks key dimensions of the multifaceted scourge of child sexual abuse.
The commission's restrictive terms of reference (which only authorise an inquiry into how institutions respond to child sexual abuse) ignores the circumstances in which the vast majority of child sexual abuse occurs. In an estimated 70% to 80% of child sexual abuse cases, there is "a familial relationship between the child victim and the offender."
The limited scope of the royal commission is symptomatic of the wider gaps and silences in the national conversation about children and sexual abuse. Delving deeper than institutional abuse reveals a problem with the way the issue of child abuse is framed and analysed in this country.
The well-established but under-publicised impact of the social changes of the last 40 years on the traditional family and child welfare is insufficiently acknowledged. In Australia, child abuse occurs disproportionately in non-traditional families. However, the over-representation of broken families, and the subject of family breakdown in general, does not receive the political, media and academic attention this major social issue warrants.
Moreover, the silence on the links between family structure and child sexual abuse is deafening. That the vast majority of child sexual abuse occurs within family settings obscures a larger and more significant truth: Children living in non-traditional families are far more likely to be sexually abused. Despite the evidence in the academic literature being "legion" and social scientists "disagree[ing] about details but not essentials," when the facts about family structure and risk of child sexual abuse are highlighted, the issue receives scant attention.
 |
| Professor Parkinson |
Some of the reactions to the ACL report were predictable. Proponents of the traditional family, such as federal Liberal MP Kevin Andrews, applauded the fearless, evidence-based discussion of family breakdown and adverse outcomes for children. Critics, such as Jane Stanley from the Council of Single Mothers and their Children (in a letter to The Australian newspaper), found the analysis to be simplistic because many separated and single-parent families produce well-adjusted children. Advocates of "marriage equality," such as gay rights activist Rodney Croome, even cited the findings to call for legalising homosexual and lesbian marriage to ensure that children of same-sex couples are raised by married parents.
Yet one would think that this dose of harsh reality delivered by an academic of Parkinson's stature would provoke stronger reactions. Child welfare advocates, along with select politicians and media outlets, might have been expected to call for "something" to be done to protect children at significantly greater risk of violation. In response, defenders of sole parenting in the welfare lobby and academia might have mounted the metaphorical barricades, given the authoritative connection between family structure and the risk of sexual victimisation.
However, Parkinson's article (and report) prompted neither outrage nor denial. The response to his sober and scholarly directing of attention to "how often" children are sexually abused in non-traditional families was silence. The facts were neither disputed nor acknowledged in the little public discussion that ensued; the report simply washed in and out of the public domain and left little trace on community attitudes.
The "new silence" about family breakdown and child sexual abuse is a troubling insight into contemporary social mores. The silence stems from the lasting influence on mainstream culture of the 1960s social revolution, which fundamentally altered the conventions governing marriage and the raising of children. The most significant social changes since the 1960s have been the introduction of "no fault" divorce and escalating rates of marriage breakdown; the collapse of the social stigmas forbidding sexual relations and cohabitation outside marriage; and increasing numbers of children born out of wedlock and living in single-parent households, mostly with mothers and often relying on government benefits.
Accompanying these social changes has been a shift in moral sentiment, which has seen "progressive" Western societies such as Australia cease to make collective moral judgments about good and bad behaviour. As a result, the negative social consequences of the social revolution are rarely criticised, and key social issues are insufficiently scrutinised, including the potentially harmful impact on children of adult behaviours such as divorce and having children out of wedlock.
Yet a large volume of evidence shows that the key non-judgemental idea the social revolution has popularised and elevated into an alleged marker of social progress and greater tolerance is wrong. The traditional family is not just one among many and equally valid and worthwhile family forms.
Decades of studies examining family structure and child outcomes have found that children who live in an intact family in which the biological mother and father are married derive, on average, modest but consistent educational, social, cognitive and behavioural benefits. Conversely, family breakdown and family non-formation have been found to be significantly associated, on average, with a range of adverse outcomes that persist into adulthood. Marriage, as the foundation of family life, seems to be in a child's best interests, while the alternative - raising children outside of intact two-parent married families - appears to compromise their care and socialisation.
The social sciences have repeatedly and consistently demonstrated that marriage makes a real difference, on average, to the welfare of children irrespective of class. Nevertheless, mainstream cultural gatekeepers in politics, the media and academia prefer to avert their eyes. The public discourse about family life and child welfare is self-censored, in effect, in compliance with politically correct attitudes towards family diversity, because of strong cultural resistance to a message that contradicts "progressive" social values.
This especially applies to the way the demonstrable risk that family breakdown poses to the sexual safety of children is resolutely ignored. Child sexual abuse is not fully and frankly discussed, and attempts to flag the issue, such as the 2011 Australian Christian Lobby report, end up disappearing into the ether, due to the gatekeeping role cultural elites play in policing debates on contentious social issues.
In hindsight, we are justifiably critical of the silences that in earlier times kept child sexual abuse a hidden problem. However, the belief - which has underpinned much of the response to the royal commission - that the community has moved on from repressive attitudes of earlier times that kept child sexual abuse a hidden problem, and that no subject is now off limits, is an overstatement. A comparable silence surrounding family breakdown and child welfare confronts us today, because the cultural politics intervene and trump the facts about family type and the risk of sexual abuse.
This means that not all dimensions of the child sexual abuse scourge are treated equally.
The terrible and widespread mishandling of child sexual abuse by Catholic and other churches has provided apparent proof that all traditional institutions and sources of moral authority are corrupt and hypocritical; these scandals have thus fitted neatly with the default countercultural values embraced since the 1960s social revolution by the majority of university-educated elites with culture-shaping positions in key institutions in politics, journalism and academia.
However, many politicians, journalists and academics who rightly criticise the failings of the churches have their own blind spot, and would prefer to discuss child sexual abuse in a context that supports rather than challenges the post-1960s "progressive" consensus. Criticism of the behaviour of culturally unfashionable religious organisations is thus combined with a reluctance to give prominence to culturally unfashionable, socially conservative issues.
The unwillingness to challenge the conventional, socially progressive attitudes that now constitute the established order is thus similar to the veil of silence that helped hide the crimes of paedophile priests.
Many paedophiles deliberately infiltrated the clergy to gain access to children and exploit the deferential attitudes towards traditional institutions like churches and authority figures like priests that were once the norm. Many got away with their crimes, and children who disclosed abuse were not believed because people struggled to accept that "dear father," that pillar of the established order, would interfere with little children.
Today, we still pay due deference to deeply held but erroneous values and do not deal with society the way it is, but the way we would prefer it to be. The mirage of moral tolerance, personal liberation, and family diversity is preferred to the reality of child harm. Inconvenient truths about the family and child welfare thus have little cultural salience, and the burden of our cultural angst is once again left to rest on abused children.
If we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, it is essential that the cultural politics are set aside and that we speak openly and honestly about contentious and controversial issues. Speaking honestly requires admitting that a major threat to the welfare of children stems from the breakdown of the traditional family.
 |
| Jeremy Sammit |
The new silence will only be broken when cultural elites stop averting their eyes and reevaluate the progressive social values in which they have over-invested too much political and intellectual capital at the expense of the facts and the good of children.
Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. This is an edited extract from his new report, The New Silence: Family Breakdown and Child Sexual Abuse.
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