Kid's Photos

Taking photos of children might seem a harmless activity. Parents are doing it all the time with their own kids.
But we now know that there are people around the world who get a vicarious sexual thrill from taking such photos and videos. Seen in this light, taking photos can become a more serious activity. Lewis Carroll was apparently a fanatical photographer of children and the story goes that when he died (unmarried), his nearest relative was so embarrassed by the collection of photographs that he burned the lot.
Today we know more about the habits of child sex abusers and it seems clear that photos and videos play a large part in their obsessive behaviour. Surveys of paedophiles in the United States showed that their favourite TV viewing was the programmes which showed young girls in brief costumes doing gymnastics.

So what do we do now about Jack McClellan. A self-confessed American paedophile who has no convictions against his name but is obsessed with taking photos of young children. He even has a website listing the best public areas to view little girls.
His behaviour brought a huge public response last month when he turned up at a performance of the popular children’s programme Wiggles but ignored the actors and instead took masses of photos of the young spectators. Irate parents chased him off the set and the Wiggles producers expressed their deep concern at such activities. How can this be stopped they asked? McClennan’s actions were distasteful and offensive but he did not break any laws.
Well, when there are no laws you have to make them. Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Melvin Sandvig made a landmark decision when he placed a restraining order on Jack McClellan which makes it almost impossible for the 45-year-old American to continue to live in California. It is now illegal for McClellan to go within 10 yards of a child in California.
This is no final solution but if it is not effective the legal system will have to find a better way to protect children’s right to privacy.

Strange Cults

Sometimes you think the world is full of weird cults. Ambitious individuals with a big ego latch on to an ideology or religious belief and promote it through some form of unusual activity until it gains a cult following. History is littered with the wreckage of such movements. Nor do we learn from experience or from the record of such experiences.

Two deaths in the past week made me reflect on this strange phenomena.

In Australia the controversial Ken Dyers took his own life rather than face a barrage of criminal charges brought against him by girls who had been child victims of his sexual attacks while members of his Kenja Communications organisation. 25 years ago Dyers founded a movement which used a form of meditation which he called “energy conversion”. It was well-promoted and hundreds of people parted with thousands of dollars to attend these sessions which allegedly sometimes included one-on-one nude sessions with women and children.
Many wealthy supporters gave public support to Dyers but in the end the inevitability of his conviction for child sex abuse drove him to shoot himself in the head ten days ago.

A second death last week, that of Tammy Faye Bakker will hopefully spell the end of one of those strange “christian” movements so popular in the United States. Known as PTL (Praise the Lord) and based on saturation TV it had a cult following and was the creation of the ambitious couple Jim and Tammy Bakker. Their network programme was so popular that at its peak in the 1980’s it reached 13 million households. Every session included a hard sell call for financial donations. Hugely wealthy the Bakkers did everything with extravagance. Tammy had a drug problem and Jim enjoyed sex with young people. When he drugged and raped a young girl called Jessica Hahn he tried to bribe her with a gift of over US$250,000. It didin't work and he ended up in prison where he died a broken man. Tammy divorced him and re-built the PTL empire. She died last week of a debilitating cancer.

There are dozens of stories similar to these two.
Why should we care about such gossipy nonsense?
We care because cult and cult-like movements leave a trail of victims behind.
In many such organisations the practice of child sex abuse is quite common. It represents a form of power and control which is often the dominant drive of cult leaders and helps to reinforce their rule. Of course all people have the right to form new organisations and explore new frontiers. But when such developments are controlled by autocratic rulers without proper checks and balances we do well to examine the movement with suspicion.

Sex Offenders On-line

The news from America today reveals that US government authorities have begun searching networking sites and discovered that on MySpace alone there are more than 29,000 convicted sex offenders who have their profiles listed and who actively trawl the web. This figure is at least four times greater than the authorities had previously estimated.
Probably no other country has done this kind of analysis. In Australia where I am writing this blog there is no system for doing the cross-reference required. The email address of child sex abusers is not recorded anywhere and the government is not prepared to update its records to make such a search possible. In New Zealand it is even worse because they do not even have a paedophile register.
What both countries do know is that child sex abusers increasingly use network sites to meet and groom potential abuse victims. Just yesterday two more Australians were arrested in Sydney and Perth for trying to groom children on the net.
The American survey is a wake-up call. Trying to educate parents and children on the dangers of the net is only part of the solution. Something has to be done inside the net itself.

When Money is not the Answer

The amount of money being paid by the Roman Catholic Church to the victims of child sex abuse continues to make headlines. The wealthy churches of California have this week agreed to pay $660,000,000 to around 500 of its members which works out at about $1.3 million for each person. It has also been stated that this is not the end of all the possible payments. Similar large sums have already been paid in Boston and other American states. The Irish Catholic church faces a similar crisis and has paid out €.5.5 million already this year to claimants.
Reading the responses in American papers it is striking that a number of the recipients see the gift of money as almost irrelevant. What most of them are seeking is a genuine apology and some proof that the situation has changed. Having suffered themselves their greatest anxiety now comes from seeing other children suffer in the same way.
And regrettably cases still continue and many more payments will have to be made. Within the church the debate against priestly celibacy and male domination continues. Perhaps some of these recent events will be the precursor to change.

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