scholarly journals Religion after the Royal Commission: Challenges to Religion–State Relations

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Kathleen McPhillips
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Mandatory Reporting ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Internal Governance ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
State Relations

The findings and recommendations emanating from the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012–2017) have advised religious organisations that they need to undertake significant changes to legal, governance and cultural/theological practices. The reason for urgency in enacting these changes is that religious organisations were the least child safe institutions across all Australian organisations, with poor practices of transparency, accountability and responsibility coupled with a tendency to protect the reputation of the institution above the safety of children in their care. In Australia, new state laws have been enacted and are impacting on the internal governance systems of religious organisations, including removing the secrecy of the Catholic confessional, instituting mandatory reporting of child abuse by clerics and criminalising the failure to report child sexual abuse. Religious organisations have moved to adopt many of the recommendations regarding their troubled governance including the professionalisation of religious ministry; adoption of professional standards; and appropriate redress for survivors and changes to religious laws. However, these changes signal significant challenges to current church–state relations, which have been characterised by positioning religious organisations as special institutions that enjoy exemptions from certain human rights legislation, on the basis of protecting religious freedom. This article examines and evaluates the nexus between state and religion in Australian public life as it is emerging in a post-Royal Commission environment, and in particular contested claims around the meaning and value of religious freedom versus the necessity of institutional reform to ensure that religious organisations can demonstrate safety for children and other vulnerable groups.

scholarly journals Criminalising Institutional Failures to Prevent, Identify or React to Child Sexual Abuse

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 104-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Crofts
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Mandatory Reporting ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Criminal Sanctions ◽  
Academic Recognition ◽  
Criminal Legal System

Although there is increasing academic recognition of corporations as criminogenic, the criminal legal system has demonstrated difficulties in conceptualising corporate culpability. The current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse provides ample evidence of why organisations can and should be criminalised for systemic failures. I demonstrate that the emphasis upon individualistic subjective culpability by the criminal legal system does not adequately encapsulate the institutional failings detailed before the Royal Commission. Whilst mandatory reporting offences are important, these offences do not adequately respond to the kinds of organisational failings identified by the Royal Commission. I argue in favour of developing a new institutional offence constructed upon realist concepts of negligence and/or corporate culture that recognises that organisations are capable of wrongdoing and sufficiently blameworthy to justify the imposition of criminal sanctions. I conclude by arguing that the expressive role of criminal law justifies and requires the criminalisation of this kind of organisational wrongdoing.

Media Hierarchies of Attention: News Values and Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Waller ◽  
Tanja Dreher ◽  
Kristy Hess ◽  
Kerry McCallum ◽  
Eli Skogerbø
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
News Values ◽  
Institutional Responses

Bioethical Issues and Secondary Prevention for Nonoffending Individuals with Pedophilia

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (02) ◽  
pp. 264-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
AINSLIE HEASMAN ◽  
THOMAS FOREMAN
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Secondary Prevention ◽  
Prevention Programs ◽  
Mandatory Reporting ◽  
Health Conditions ◽  
Sexual Abuse Prevention ◽  
Abusive Behavior ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
Bioethical Issues

Abstract:Child sexual abuse is a global problem with significant emotional, psychological, and financial implications to victims, perpetrators, and society. Most child sexual abuse prevention programs target young children or those who have already engaged in abusive behavior, in order to prevent further offending. There are numerous secondary prevention programs targeting individuals at-risk of various health conditions in an effort to reduce the likelihood they will go on to experience a particular illness or disease. Considerable research exists regarding the risk factors for engaging in child sexual abuse and more specifically the factors contributing to reoffense. We argue that engaging in secondary prevention programs for people with pedophilia, in order to prevent child sexual abuse, is an ethically responsible and necessary practice. Secondary prevention programs with this focus are reviewed, along with the implications of mandatory reporting in doing this work.

scholarly journals Legal Irresponsibility and Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Crofts
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Catholic Education ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Sex Abuse ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
Child Sex Abuse

The current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has demonstrated serious long-term failures to prevent and adequately respond to child sexual abuse by institutions. Rather than regarding the law as a system of responsibility, this article argues that it can be read instead as organising irresponsibility, drawing upon Scott Veitch’s ideas in Law and Irresponsibility. His key argument is that legal institutions operate as much to deflect responsibility for harms suffered as to acknowledge them. This article focuses on the ways in which the criminal justice system is complicit in organising irresponsibility for systemic failures through an analysis of the Royal Commission Case Study No 6: The responses of a primary school and the Toowoomba Catholic Education Office to the Conduct of Gerald Byrnes. Through concrete examples, this article analyses the ways in which criminal law organises irresponsibility through the individuation of responsibility and the emphasis upon subjective culpability. These practices ensure irresponsibility for actors for systemic failures.

scholarly journals Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation: Guest Editor’s Introduction

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Michael Salter
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Use Of The Internet ◽  
The Individual

One of the most unnerving aspects of child sexual abuse is that it is constantly manifesting in unexpected ways. The current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has collected testimony of abuse in churches, schools, out-of-home care, hospitals and religious communities, demonstrating the breadth of institutional arrangements whose structures and cultures have facilitated child sexual abuse. Cases of serious and prolonged sexual abuse in family contexts have been excluded from the terms of reference of the Royal Commission but nonetheless continue to surface in media reports. In 2013, twelve children were permanently removed from an extended family living in rural NSW in what has been described as one of the worst cases of child abuse in Australia, involving intergenerational incest going back at least three generations (Auebach 2014). Another recent high-profile case involved the use of the Internet to facilitate the sexual exploitation of an adopted child by his parents in Queensland (Ralston 2013). These cases challenge the received wisdom that child sexual abuse is characterised by the victimisation of one child by one opportunistic offender. Such incidents suggest instead that child sexual abuse takes varied and systemic forms, and can operate to perpetuate and entrench toxic cultures and power structures.   This special issue on Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation is a timely contribution to ongoing efforts to understand the multiplicity of child sexual abuse. It is an interdisciplinary collection of insights drawn from criminology, sociology, psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis, and includes papers from academic researchers alongside academic practitioners whose writing is grounded in their work with affected individuals and communities. A key aim of the special issue is to contextualise the diversity of child sexual abuse socially, politically and historically, recognising the dynamic and iterative relationships between sexual abuse and the contexts in which it takes place. The contributions to this special issue examine how the diversity and dynamics of abuse unfold at the individual, community and social level, and across time. The issue is focused on emerging or under-recognised forms of child sexual abuse, such as organised abuse and sexual exploitation, which illustrate recent shifts in the knowledge base and require new and innovative criminological thinking.Download the PDF file from this page to find out more about this special edition.

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