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Allegations of rampant child abuse spark major public outcries, but the cyclical and reactionary way of dealing with the issue allows it to persist. Professor Michael Salter explains how the unwillingness to confront the possibility of child abuse enables abusers to operate and resources to dwindle when it is not in the political zeitgeist.
‘Unfortunately, that is a big blind spot for countries like Australia. ’Allegations of rampant child abuse spark major public outcries about the safety of children across Australia.
It happened in 2017 after a royal commission found the Catholic Church had spent decades covering up child abuse in a landmark case. But less than a decade later, several people are currently before the courts charged with hundreds of child abuse offences. They include childcare workers accused of filming and sharing child abuse material, and even an alleged “satanic” child abuse material ring operating out of the suburbs of Sydney.
The shocking allegations in the past year have once again stirred up public horror and placed child abuse into the spotlight. But that cyclical and reactionary way of dealing with child abuse is the reason we haven’t been able to stamp it out, according to University of NSW Professor Michael Salter.
The director of Childlight UNSW — the Australasian hub of Childlight, the Global Child Safety Institute — said the inherent seriousness of child abuse leads to people developing an “instinct to turn away”.
“Child abuse is really hard for people to think about for a long period of time, it’s really uncomfortable,” Salter told 7NEWS.com.au. ”It reminds us of our own childhood. It reminds us of how vulnerable we were, how difficult and scary it can be to be a child.
“I think as adults we spend a lot of time trying to forget and it’s these child sexual abuse cases that I think bring the issue of how vulnerable and helpless children are to front and mind ... so, we just prefer not to think about it. ”An expert has revealed why child abuse continues to be an issue in Australia despite a number of high-profile cases.
That unwillingness to confront the possibility of child abuse occurring, according to Salter, allows for child abusers to operate. It also means resources to combat the crime will often dwindle when it is not in the political zeitgeist.
“If we think about the really extraordinary and egregious daycare sexual abuse cases from last year, it seemed as though it was all that people could think about for a while,” Salter said. “What we find, those of us who work in child sexual abuse, is that everyone tells you that it is the worst possible thing ... and yet it’s an area where there’s actually very little resourcing.
“It actually doesn’t get the resourcing that it needs, despite the fact that everyone tells you that it’s the worst social problem they can imagine. ” The inherent seriousness of the crime means Australians tend to ‘turn away’ from the idea of active child abuse in the community. Alleged child abuse has accelerated with advancements in the internet, social media and artificial intelligence making it easier to create, share and acquire the material from anywhere across the globe.
“Over the last five years, we’ve seen the rise of organised crime networks who are making money from child sexual abuse are targeting children in an extremely predatory and co-ordinated way that the royal commission could never have imagined. back in 2015,” Salter said. Salter said Australia had slowly been reducing incidents of physical child abuse since the 1960s but had since seen a steep increase in online offending.
“We’ve also seen a generation of children who have been exposed to a lot of explicit content and, unfortunately, that means they have become more likely to sexually harm other children,” Salter said. “So when it comes to child sex abuse, we have clear evidence that we are able to prevent it if we take a co-ordinated approach.
“But the internet and online harms is an example where we have really abandoned a generation of kids and now we have to try to clean up the mess. “Child sexual abuse is evolving really rapidly and although Australia, I think, takes the protection of children seriously we cannot take our foot off the gas pedal.
” While the method of abuse may have shifted since the turn of the millennium, Salter added there are ways for parents to help stop their children from becoming victims in the future. They include staying attentive to their children and the adults in their life, while also ensuring they have someone they can trust.
He said that children should be told in an age-appropriate way that “there are bad people out there, they can trick you, lie to you, make it feel like it’s your fault and make you feel like you need to keep a secret”.
“We need to keep having those conversations with kids regularly, rather than assume just a one-off conversation’s going to be enough,” Salter said. “Because the type of risk that kids are exposed to changes every year and just making sure that a child’s got at least one adult in their life they know they can go to if they’re in trouble makes a huge difference. ”
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