Shocking but not surprising indictment of the Victorian government's record on child protection - and the not-at-all shocking bias and blind ideological eye Melbourne's Age has always shown in this matter

It was with stunning irony that Melbourne's feminised newspaper The Age gave extensive comment to several reports, including the ombudsman's, on the failure of the state's child protection service. The opening paragraphs of the 29 September article by Bernadette McMenamin AO, the chief executive of Child Wise, gives the rich flavour of the Brumby government's appalling moral failure:

It was a bad week for the Victorian Government but it deserves it for failing our children. The 30-year incest case involving a woman allegedly kept as a sex slave in country Victoria came to light a day after an Ombudsman's report revealed that Victoria's child protection system was in crisis.

One of the worst and most inexcusable findings was that Department of Human Services workers were placing vulnerable children in the care of convicted child sex offenders without conducting police checks. In one case, when the department was alerted to the fact two boys were in the care of a convicted child sex offender, it took 17 days for its response team to follow up.

Another fact is that only about 5 per cent of child sex offenders have convictions. Therefore the vast majority of people who may harm our children are living in the community. [my emphasis]

The Ombudsman's report also found there was inadequate supervision and workloads were excessive. It used the example of a case worker who had a list of 64 children waiting for a case worker. The Ombudsman called for immediate action and was seriously concerned by the fact the department could not provide adequate care and protection to abused and vulnerable children.

A lengthy ABC news report included the following:

Another scathing report from Victoria's Ombudsman found the system slow to act, under-resourced and at times dishonest.....The report identifies many instances where authorities failed to intervene when it should have, and alleges some staff manipulated records, saying children had been visited when they had not.

Over the decades the state left children exposed to systematic ongoing sexual abuse, parental neglect to the point of starvation, and violence sometimes ending in death. Those responsible for the protection of children tried to cover up their failures and negligence by lying. Sound familiar? But let me come back to that.

The Victorian government is not alone in its failure to protect its children. An internet search on government child protection services and the incidence of child abuse, both violent and sexual, will reveal a similar state of affairs in other states. I made a comment on a Courier-Mail report about Queensland's courts being clogged with cases of child abuse: Child abuse cases overload Queensland's courts. One report. Why wasn't it all over the media?

I say ironic because The Age reports are a vindication of my claim that the media in general, and The Age in particular, have been appallingly and dishonestly biased in reporting and commenting on cases of clerical sexual abuse, as if only priests in an otherwise unimpeachably chaste society were the only ones to indulge in sexual abuse. They also support my claim that some newspapers and media groups, Fairfax's Age being at the forefront, are engaged in a hard-bitten campaign against Catholics and the Catholic Church, exploiting clerical sexual abuse for ideological reasons.

One should not be fooled into thinking that The Age has gallantly reported the state neglect, as if pursuing justice in the community nobly and without prejudice. The record of their reporting predilections and journalistic investment demonstrated they had no choice. Their frequent and detailed reporting on clerical sexual abuse cases, always casting the Church as a dark villain, shows that they have the interest - the obsessive interest - and the specialist staff to investigate the matter. In economic terms the investment in reporting on clerical sexual abuse is huge and disproportionate. The recent 'investigative' reports by Nick McKenzie about the Fr Pavlou case are a terrific demonstration of what I claim.

Investigative reporter McKenzie wrote up three reports around the same time dealing with the Fr Pavlou case, throwing in for good measure the oh-so-shocking information that Archbishop Hart after being hounded continually by a woman told her 'to go to hell, bitch!' when she knocked on his door at 1.20 AM. For my purposes here let me leave aside the stomach-turning hypocrisy of the reaction. The Age then produced an equally stomach-turning editorial - something they do so well - which regurgitated in typically colourful manner past accusations against the Church. There was Bishop Anthony Fisher's claim that people were dwelling crankily on particular cases - and they were, as the media record shows - and Bishop Tomlinson's recent comment that the clerical sexual abuse affair has thrown up a 'victims industry'.

There is nothing clearer in my mind than that some people are exploiting clerical sexual abuse and the pervasive anti-Catholicism in the community for financial gain. After all, as enemies of the Church have sometimes commented, the Church is a slow-moving target. And, of course, it has the easy money. No problem to syphon off money those ignorant working class Catholics contributed to the Church through the decades.

I made a comment on McKenzie's reports, pointing out yet again that in the haste to indict the Church for negligence and lack of compassion crucial elements of clerical sexual abuse were being ignored, in particular the fact that most abusers were homosexuals abusing pubescent males. There is no need for me to cover that same ground here. The salient point here is that The Age possessed the motivation and means to go after the abuse of children in the state wherever it occurred. It did not. It was only the Catholic Church that it pursued - unrelentingly. How much culpability and negligence on their own measure does this demonstrate? But this is not all.

Most cases that are prosecuted against Catholic clergy are for 'indecent acts' as in the case of Fr Pavlou. This generally means fondling private parts. I don't want to minimise the culpability of priests who are found guilty of sexual abuse. Let the cards fall where they will when the accused is brought before the courts. But let's be serious. Fondling private parts is hardly on the same level as the ongoing bashing, rape, starvation and mental torture of children. This was happening in Victorian society while The Age blindly prosecuted its bitter campaign against the Catholic Church.

It will be interesting to see how that newspaper deals with clerical sexual abuse from this point on, and if their ideological bitterness finds its goals more important than justice and fair dealing.

Sexual abuse pervades Western society. Its origins are to be found in the dramatic changes the Kinsey generation brought about. Clerical sexual abuse in a minor way is a manifestation of those changes. If the media wants to be serious about sexual abuse, it will go back and examine those changes. But they won't - be serious, I mean. There is too much invested in life-style and self-indulgence. I wonder what sort of sexual impropriety one would find if one was able to get behind the media curtain.

Read the reports:

The state fails abused children

The fight for damaged kids

Risky families may face welfare controls

It takes more than money to protect our kids

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com