Child sexual abuse in institutional and non-institutional contexts

This chapter first focuses on major challenges confronting child and youth-serving organisations and high-risk settings. It then discusses the nature, key findings and major recommendations of Australia’s Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, a landmark public inquiry into institutional sexual abuse, including a special focus on the Roman Catholic Church. The chapter then focuses on several recent examples of progress in responses to major problems presented by child sexual abuse in institutional and non-institutional settings. Developments from Australia in particular, but also from other countries, will show how new public health law responses, including through civil law, and with various emphases on primary prevention and secondary prevention, can create frameworks for enhanced prevention, identification, and response to cases of child sexual abuse. Some of these responses, such as redress schemes, reportable conduct schemes and child safe standards legislation, have specific application to institutional settings. Other responses, such as the abolition of statutes of limitation for civil claims for injuries caused by sexual abuse, and other kinds of legislative reporting duties, have broader application across society, as they apply to sexual abuse in all settings, whether within institutions, families, private settings, or other community settings. These responses are of broad application regarding prevention of child sexual abuse, early identification of child sexual offending, and ensuring appropriate responses once it is known or suspected. They are particularly relevant when dealing with high risk institutional settings and prolific individual offenders, both of which present especially urgent examples of the need for an appropriate societal approach to child sexual abuse informed by public health and social justice

Children and Safety in Australian Policy: Implications for Organisations and Practitioners

Child safety is now a national policy priority in Australia. Extensive inquiries and reviews have escalated legislative and policy responses focused on developing, maintaining and monitoring ‘child safe’ organisations. The recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse point to the importance of cultural conditions within organisations in supporting child safety and the need for responsive change in some organisations. Drawing on a recent policy analysis, undertaken as part of a larger Australian Research Council Discovery Project, this article examines how children and safety are constructed, within and across relevant state and federal government policies in Australia, and the implications of this. Distinctions are drawn between conceptualisations of children within the broader education policy context and two specific policy contexts in which children are considered particularly vulnerable to abuse – out-of-home care and disability. The findings indicate that policy discourses of ‘child safe’ potentially foster different emphases and approaches in organisations. These have implications for the way children are positioned in relation to their safety, how their rights are recognised and implemented, and what is required to foster cultural conditions within organisations to best support children’s safety and wellbeing

The context of child sexual abuse, and points of departure

This chapter sets out the context of child sexual abuse and marks out several points of departure from which the rest of the book proceeds. It first defines the concept of child sexual abuse. Then, it reviews the best literature on the prevalence of child sexual abuse both generally, and in specific contexts, around the world. It reviews other important epidemiological features, referring to evidence about gender, age of onset, the relationship between those who inflict abuse and the child, frequency of offending, factors influencing offending, and theories of offending. It notes the common health and behavioural consequences of child sexual abuse. Significantly, it then reviews literature on the common non-disclosure of child sexual abuse by both girls and boys: a critical feature of this context. The chapter than shows that the gravity of child sexual abuse should be and is recognised in international policy and in most social norms. An appropriately nuanced approach is then urged, in recognition of a spectrum of cases that demand appropriately differentiated responses. Finally, the chapter explains that the book also proceeds on the basis that in any civilised society, individuals, institutions and broader social systems and nation states have a deep ethically-based duty to prevent and identify child sexual abuse, and to respond appropriately to it after it occurs. These ethical duties are consistent with bodies of political and public health theory, the Capabilities Approach, and human dignity informing the book’s entire conceptual approach