Australia's hidden child-sex scourge

In the past few days Melbourne's Age has run a series of articles from one of its "investigative" reporters on clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Those articles have not been so much about sexual abuse as about the failure of the Catholic Church to deal with the problem which, The Age makes clear, is a result of the Church's flawed structure - flawed of course according to elevated political principles The Age has in admirable condescension prescribed for Australia.

The articles were supported today by the usual style editorial brimming with sanctimony against the background of its rigid ideological outlook. 3AW's Neil Mitchell has regurgitated those reports - as he can always be relied upon to do. I should also point out that the Age's investigative reporter has obviously got some of his information, if not all, from the virulent anti-Catholic organisation known as Broken Rites.

You would think from team Age-Mitchell-Broken-Rites' obsessive activity that Catholic priests were the only people in the land to sexually abuse children, and that the Catholic Church is the seed-bed of this crime. Below I have reproduced a Courier-Mail report in its entirety. What this report details about Queensland must be to a lesser or greater extent the situation in other states. The probability of it being otherwise is too low for it seriously to be doubted.

One difference between the 6,500 child-sex charges reported here over three years and the 450 sexual abuse claims (of which 280 have been sustained) brought against Catholic clergy over fifty years is that the former concerns predominantly prepubescent females and the latter overwhelmingly concerns homosexual clergy abusing pubescent males. The Broken Rites website confirms this, as do all lists of clergy found to have abused minors. Team Age-Mitchell-Broken-Rites makes nothing of this fact, despite the conclusion normal reasoning would dictate.

The 6,500 state charges vs. 450 national charges indicate that the seed-bed for the crime of child sexual abuse is not the Catholic Church but Australian society at large. Fifty years ago what is now known as the sexual revolution came upon us. That revolution was deeply influenced by the Kinsey Report which with its materialist presuppositions overturned traditional sexual morality. I was a youth at that time, the time of the Push and Richard Neville and Co.

Everyone I knew, whatever their degree of acceptance, was influenced by Kinsey and the indulgence the sexual revolution opened up. That was the seed-bed for all types of sex crimes, not only child sexual abuse. Clearly, the Catholic clergy who abused children rejected the traditional teaching of the Church and treacherously went headlong into the Kinsey world.

The same philosophical presuppositions that were the bulwark of the Kinsey sexual "freedom" are the same presuppositions of the politically correct class whose outstanding apologist The Age is. The feminised Age with its complement of homosexual activists is a guardian of the sexual revolution. This explains the obsession The Age has with the Catholic Church. It explains why The Age picks and chooses among the facts of clerical sexual abuse and assembles the chosen facts to blacken the Church and its adherents. All this while ignoring evidence that the problem of child sexual abuse is far greater and more widespread in the general community.

The Age is unswerving in exploiting the misery and sordidness of clerical treachery and sexual abuse to advance its political agenda. That's the evidence.

Was there really a priest paedophile problem?

Child sexual abuse and shameless media bias

Child-sex scourge clogging Queensland's courts

Jason Gregory
July 07, 2008 12:00am

QUEENSLAND'S struggling court system is being increasingly clogged by thousands of child-sex cases in what has become the state's hidden scourge.

As authorities again grapple with how to manage convicted pedophile Dennis Raymond Ferguson, who was released from custody last week after a District Court judge threw out two molestation charges against him, startling new figures show almost 6500 child-sex charges were laid across the state between July 2005 and June last year.

Legal experts said most defendants appearing in District and Supreme courts a decade ago faced murder, manslaughter or assault-related charges, but in recent years the majority were charged with child-sex offences.

Crown prosecutor Sal Vasta said the public was unaware of the vast numbers of people appearing in court charged with sex offences involving children. He said there were no signs of the flood of cases easing.

"What has happened is that we have better educated the children and that is why we have seen this huge jump," he said.

"The fact is, the stigma that is attached to it is not as great as it once was. You look at the figures and think we must be cleaning it up because they are so high, but the escalation of cases is not cleaning it up."

Attorney-General Kerry Shine said there was no doubt reporting of child-sex matters was more common, and that was placing a burden on the judicial system.

Justice Department figures obtained by The Courier-Mail show there were 6486 child molestation charges between July 2005 and June last year. They included indecent treatment, incest, using the internet to procure and maintaining a sexual relationship with a child.

Almost 1300 accused pedophiles were sentenced or pleaded guilty in state district courts between July 2005 and June 2007.

Brisbane District Court dealt with the largest number of cases, with 560 people charged with indecently treating a child under 16.

Another 62 faced charges of carnal knowledge, 19 were in court on incest offences and 90 were accused of maintaining a sexual relationship with a child.

Cairns was the next busiest court, dealing with 127 child-sex charges, followed by Beenleigh (109 cases), Ipswich (114), Townsville (94), Maroochydore (80), Rockhampton (74), and Southport (66).

QUT criminologist Tricia Fox said part of the upsurge in cases could be because children were better educated and more confident in reporting abuse.

Doctors, nurses and those in other human services roles were now also legally bound to report evidence of abuse.

She said the internet had also played the dual role of allowing easier access to child pornography and allowing police to track offenders.

"We are seeing that the engagement in child pornography does not have any barriers in terms of crossing gender, class and income," she said.

Mr Shine said the main reason for the increase in cases was that modern court processes provided greater protection and support for victims who report both current and historical offences.

A recent police report included 22 recommendations on changes to the law some of which would tighten restrictions on sexual offenders.

additional reporting John McCarthy

The Courier-Mail Report:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23978570-952,00.html

comments: gerardwilson01@optusnet.com.au