Is it Racism?

New Zealand Maori Member of Parliament, Hone Harawira caused a ruction when he called Australia's Prime Minister Howard a "racist bastard"for his new policy to invade the Aboriginal communities and change their behavioural patterns. He was called to task by his own Maori party for the personal attack, but they also noted their belief there is deep-seated racism in Australia's general attitude to their Aboriginal population.
This would be hard to deny because the Aboriginal people have suffered serious injustice ever since the first colonialists arrived. From 1910 to 1970 an estimated one-third of all Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their family and forced to live in a European community in an effort to 'civilize' them. In the eyes of the government at that time Aboriginal's did not even exist and were not included in the census until 1967.
The policy over recent years has been segregation and separate development. It is a policy which did not work in the United States or Canada and is not working in Australia. Living on reservations does not contribute to human development but to despair. Look no further for the high rate of alcoholism and suicide in the Aboriginal population.
It is good to know that Australia is at least attempting to do something to protect the Aboriginal children from abuse, however misguided the methods used. But let us hope that this is not the end and that it will lead to a more sympathetic policy toward the whoe Aboriginal population

Howard's Heavy Hand

Sign in a Supermarket in Alice Springs:
"Spend $60 in the liquor store and get 20cents off a litre of petrol"

It is getting close to election time in Australia and Prime Minister John Howard has just discovered that the indigenous Aboriginal people are in trouble. Mr Howard, it should be added, is a slow learner. Most thinking Australians have been telling him that for decades.
The report that moved the Prime Minister to action was called Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle which translates into – “Little Children are Sacred". It details the sad and often appalling stories of child sex abuse on the reservations of Northern Territory. This is not news. When I was in Australia speaking at an international conference eight years ago I was approached by two Aboriginal elders from Western Australia who sought help in trying to prevent the sexual abuse of their children. They recognised that some of this was caused by the actions of their own people but they were equally concerned at the abuse of children by white Australians some of whom were officials and others who regularly visited the reservations to find children. They had approached the police and social agencies but had received no support from any quarter.
Whatever support they wanted, I am sure it was not the kind of thing the Prime Minister is proposing. Using his power to make political decisions in the Northern Territory (It is not a State and therefore under federal control), the Howard solution will be to send in the troops and enforce the locals to give up the booze and live a better life. They will also be forced to learn English.
It is Iraq thinking and will not succeed. The desperate plight of the Aboriginals is the consequence of years of neglect and external abuse. Historically they often been treated like children and sometimes like animals and not as responsible humans. It is only in recent years that they received the right to vote.
Yes it is time the government acted but not in a way which further strips the Aboriginal people of their dignity.

€nd Child $ex

The title of our blog has two curious inclusions – the Euro € and the Dollar $. They are there for a purpose. They serve to remind you that in our generation children have become commodities which can be purchased, used and sold. It is the first time in history that children have been used in such a widespread and callous fashion.

Children growing up in poor communities of the world can now be sold to criminal groups and trafficked to a foreign country where they are kept in slavery and used as sexual objects for as long as possible. Then they are discarded.

In some countries of the world children have a monetary value which enables them to be purchased, hired and sold in much the same fashion as any other commodity at the supermarket. You have to go far back in history to see children used for slavery in such a callous fashion, and never has it been on the scale we see today.

In many ways tourism and the globalised world have created much of this situation. In Thailand during the 1990’s we found that It was the coming of foreign paedophiles willing to pay big money for child sex who created the opportunity for criminals to begin trafficking children. Still today there are well-organised criminal rings trafficking children within Asia, Central America and Eastern Europe.

Children are subjects not objects. They need to be respected as subjects of affection and not objects used for monetary gain or sexual pleasure.

Ron O'Grady

Breaking the Paedophile Rings

This week yet another ring of child sex abusers was uncovered. A particularly nasty group of 700 members located in 35 countries has been exposed. Not only did the participants collect large numbers of images of child pornography many of them were also linked together for live broadcasts of an actual abuse.
The British police uncovered the central character in this ring and after that began to uncover many other members of the ring. Through forensic investigation they were also able to identify 30 of the abused children and rescue them from the cruelty of their situation.
Of course we are delighted that the abusers have been caught but t is a very small victory in a very large battle. It is evident that there are many organisations of this kind operating around the world and their methods of ensuring secrecy have become increasingly sophisticated. Many of them evade discovery by using servers or anonymous remailers in Russia or one of the other former Eastern bloc countries.
Law enforcement officers play a cat and mouse game in trying to break these paedophile circles of abuse. No sooner do they find a way to monitor one form of information transfer than another IT method brings new problems of identification. And despite the serious nature of this crime against children it is still not regarded as a priority in some quarters. One of the ring members in Britain involved in the broadcast abuses had around 5000 child pornographic images on his computer and 392 child sex movies. Even if he is found guilty by the court he could still be released from prison in 19 months.

Catholic Priests

A senior Catholic spokesman, Cardinal McCarrick, formerly Archbishop of Washington popped into New Zealand last month and spoke to the newspapers about paedophile priests. It was, he said, a reflection of the 60’s “when anything goes….and the sexual mores went down and down.”.
Asked how widespread the abuse was he made the comment: “When all is said and done, you are still talking about less than one out of 25 priests over a period of 60 years.”
It was a surprising admission. Critics in America have been saying for some time that the rate of priests offending is at least 4% of the total but this is the first time I have heard a senior Catholic churchman admitting that this figure could be accurate.
Think for a moment of the implications. Since 1984 there have been about 60,000 active priests in the United States and on these figures the church has been harbouring around 2,400 paedophile priests over the past 20 years. This is a very high number and proportionally much higher than equivalent figures in the total population.
Why is this so? Critics have argued that forced celibacy is a key reason for priestly offending but the Cardinal denied that claim saying that other churches which have married clergy have the same rates of offending. A claim which he did not substantiate and one which is, in the absence of any evidence, debateable to say the least.
One of the saddest aspects to this situation is that Rome still retains a directive issued by the present Pope when he was Cardinal Ratzinger and head of the Vatican Office for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Office of the Inquisitor General). The directive orders that whenever there is even a hint of child abuse by clergy the local church must set up a tribunal to investigate the case and report to Rome and this entire process is to be covered by church secrecy. According to Reuters, the directive was sent to Bishops confidentially and asked them not to divulge the information contained in the letter to the media.
We can only hope that the frankness of the Cardinal is a signal of a new openness in the church so that attempts to cover up criminal actions by the priests will no longer be permitted.

Virtual Sex

The fashionable web site for many young people in Europe is called Second Life. It is an online virtual world in which you can live a virtual life and indulge all your fantasies. You can buy and sell properties and become whatever you secretly desire from life.

Not surprisingly virtual pornography places a part in the secret life of many of the citizens in this make-believe world. But now there is a new development with a number of second lifers becoming involved in the buying and selling of child pornography. Anonymous citizens have been selling images of child sex and paying for virtual sex with others players who had child-like avatars.

Some argue that since a real child is not involved no harm has been done. But this is not true. Child pornographic images whether real or simulated represent an abuse against all children and serve to confirm child abusers that their actions are acceptable.

The majority of Second Life users in Europe are in Germany and fortunately the German government now has a law which makes virtual child pornography a crime punishable by a prison sentence of up to five years. Police in that country are now actively seeking those who are trading child pornography in the virtual world. Promoters of Second Life are assisting them in their search.

The speed of change in the IT world means a constant revision of national laws to deal with such issues as virtual reality. Laws in the virtual world must continue to reflect the values and standards of the real world.

No Room in the Cells

It seems most countries are having a building boom in prisons. About nine million people fill the world’s prisons at any one time with the United States leading the field. These numbers continue to grow everywhere and there are never enough cells.

In Britain it has created such a difficult situation that the Home Secretary recently took the unusual step of writing directly to the country’s judges warning them that the prisons were getting too full and would they kindly try to reduce the number of criminals being sentenced to prison. While the intention was good, the result was disastrous. As a consequence many judges have become more lenient with their sentences and guess which criminals gained the benefit? No prizes for guessing that it was the child sex offenders.

One persistent Welsh sex offender who had been caught with a large number of obscene images of child sex abuse was released with a suspended sentence instead of the expected prison sentence. Leaving the court the abuser told the press that he had been rather lucky. Such decisions reflect the attitude shown by judges in many countries. Faced each day with murder, theft and horrific crimes there appears to be a feeling that a known sex abuser with a large collection of appalling images of violent child sex abuse is actually committing a lesser crime than burglars and thieves.

There are two compelling reasons why this attitude has to stop. The first is that sex offenders are a continuing threat to the most vulnerable members of society. Society must protect its children from abusers in their midst and regrettably prison appears to be the only effective way this can be done.

The second reason is that prison forces the abuser to face some of the consequences of his crime and gives a chance to change some of his patterns of behaviour. While prison rehabilitation courses have often been less successful than desired at least they have enabled some offenders to control their drive to abuse and that has to be a plus.

Prison reform is needed – but not by increased tolerance of child sex abuse.