Paedophilia: Policy and Prevention -
Australian Institute of Criminology
Conference
By Jean Lennane
This conference was held at Sydney University on
14-15 April. It was a serious conference, on an
increasingly hot topic for whistleblowers, so it
seems important to share information from it with
readers of the whistle. The following is
necessarily only a brief outline, but it can give
some idea of who's who in the area, and where
they're coming from.
It's not altogether clear how and why people were
invited, but WBA, and people like Franca Arena,
heard about it only on the grapevine. The main
invitees appeared to be government departments,
who could afford the high registration fee ($200 a
day!), but whose record in this area is not
impressive. Victim/survivor lobby and support
groups seem not have been invited, and any
input from victims or their families was
conspicuously absent from the official program -
even from the section on 'Victim Evidence'. This
section was originally going to have only two
speakers - Brent Waters, a child psychiatrist
whose evidence in court has usually been on
behalf of alleged offenders; and Richard Guilliatt, a
journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, who
has written a number of articles about false
allegations of sexual abuse, and a book
'debunking' the existence of satanic abuse.
However after protests Dr Anne Cossins, a Senior
Lecturer from the Faculty of Law at UNSW was
added to that section, giving an excellent and
comprehensive paper on memory, and there was
strong and vocal victim representation in the
audience and discussion throughout the
conference.
The keynote address was 'Paedophilia: the public
health problem of the decade', by Dr Bill Glaser, a
Melbourne forensic psychiatrist. It was excellent,
pointing out the magnitude of the problem, its
devastating effects on victims, and the failure of
existing systems, legal and otherwise, to deal with
it, prevent it, or provide effective treatment
for victims or perpetrators. There was a great deal of
media coverage of what he said, which seemed to
me to stymie what could otherwise have been the
result of the conference, viz to provide a
supportive introduction for proposals from Judge
Howie that are to to to the Attorneys-General
These were announced in the Sun-Herald the
following Sunday, and when viewed in a cynical
light appear in effect to lower the age of consent to
about ten, as long as the perpetrator has an
honest belief that the child is older. {Since
evidence from children under 6 years, for various
reasons is seldom accepted in court, the practical
result of these recommendations if implemented
would be to provide legal protection - such as it is
- only between the ages of 6 and 10.) It would
seem wildly unlikely that any Attorney-General
could think such proposals could be acceptable to
the electorate, but some very influential people are
pushing them very hard.
The section on detection and reporting included
Professor Kim Oates (paediatrics, Sydney Uni), Dr
Judy Cashmore (Social Policry Research, UNSW),
Kylie Miller (Strategic Intelligence Unit, NCA), who
gave more information on the extent
and seriousness of the problem from a victim-empathic
point of view, and Dr Diana Kenny, (A/prof
Psychology, Sydney Uni) whose line I found hard
to follow, but tended to emphasise the unreliability
of people alleging child sexual abuse.
The section on investigation, prosecution and
defence included John Heslop, head of the new
Child Protection Enforcement Agency, NSW
Police, who seems to have a realistic view of the
difficulties posed by offenders being 'nice men',
often pillars of their community, and with networks
of protection. Margaret Cunneen, (Crown
Prosecutor, DPP NSW) spoke about practical
problems in prosecution, e.g. the refusal of most
judges to allow offenders with multiple victims to
have a single trial, at which they would almost
certainly be convicted, rather than a separate trial
fro each victim, at each of which they might well be
acquitted, since the jury would be unaware of all
the corroborative evidence.