Ideas & Society Program: The Crimes of Church and State against Children

Content note: The ‘Ideas and Society’ event will discuss sensitive topics related to child sexual abuse and may be distressing for some attendees. Viewer discretion is advised. Please seek support as needed.

The Crimes of Church and State against Children  

The sexual abuse of children and adolescents has been the subject of two groundbreaking recent investigations: Anne Manne's analysis of the abuse by a network of Anglican clergy in Newcastle, Crimes of the Cross, and Michael Salter's new research into the surprising frequency with which men report sexual feelings towards children and teenagers. The journalist, Russell Jackson, has also recently uncovered the widespread sexual abuse of children in the state school system in Victoria. How the community can protect children in the future, and support victim-survivors, remain urgent questions, as Katie Wright's new research on awareness raising seeks to address.

How well do we understand the causes of these crimes, and most importantly of all, the impact on the victim-survivors?

Why have children who are victim-survivors of sexual abuse so frequently been disbelieved?

Why have the perpetrators of these crimes so frequently been protected?

Do perpetrators in Australia and abroad come disproportionately from the supposedly celibate priests of the Roman Catholic Church, as is commonly believed?

How can the perpetrators be best detected? Can there be interventions, as Salter suggests, prior to any offending taking place?

What has the new research conducted into the grooming by "Powerful Perpetrators" in organisations, summarised in the research of Stephen Smallbone and others, added to an understanding of the sexual abuse of children?

What were the principal conclusions of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to these crimes? What did the Royal Commission achieve?

Host: Dr Katie Wright

Associate Professor, Sociology, Department of Social Inquiry

Speaker: Anne Manne

Writer

Speaker: Professor Michael Salter

Postgraduate Coordinator, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales

Speaker: Professor Stephen Smallbone

School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University