Mainstream media reporting on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, especially from the ABC, focussed almost exclusively on the damning accusations against churches. This was not unmerited — but the one-eyed hyper-focus of the media left the bigger picture entirely obscured.
There is no doubt that not only were a relatively small number of clergy responsible for often horrific abuse the abuse was compounded by an official culture of secrecy. But there was — and is, long after the churches have belatedly cleaned up their act — another institution where even more abuse was and is being perpetrated, while those in charge conspire to keep it under wraps.
Schools — especially public schools.
A review into child sexual abuse in Tasmanian public schools has found there is “some record of concern” about more than 40 current employees, including at least three principals, with half potentially requiring further investigation.
The full report into decades of child sexual abuse in the state education system — released to the ABC under Right to Information laws — also found a lack of information sharing meant state schools could be employing “relief teachers who have red flags next to their names” without their knowledge.
To their credit, the ABC in Tasmania is at last reporting on these revelations. But they — and more importantly, their flagship national counterparts — are getting nothing like the saturation coverage levied at the churches. There are no senior ABC journalists writing lurid books, making all manner of (unsubstantiated) accusations against principals and education bureaucrats, with the aim of destroying them.
These are not just historic accusations, either.
[The] report detailed how the Education Department had “wilfully disregarded” complaints of sexual abuse from students, instead shuffling abusers between schools, in order to protect itself from legal, financial and reputational risks.
It also found “very recent” examples of students’ concerns and complaints being assumed to be untrue, and a lack of record-keeping meant patterns and trends of abuse could not be analysed.
Anecdotally, at least one teacher has told me that they’d never work at one particular school. Because everyone knows, he says, that the principal is a pedo. But anyone who tries to speak out is blacklisted.
“This analysis identified 41 currently serving DoE employees with some record of concern, 21 of whose cases were assessed as requiring a more detailed review and possible further investigation,” the report states […]
The spreadsheet identifies 243 child complainants dating back over a 60-year period and says that there are “many additional cases” that don’t have enough detail to add to that tally.
ABC Australia
Evidence from the US shows that abuse complaints against female teachers — who now constitute the vast majority of teachers — in particular, are surging. Some reports have described it as “endemic”. Despite a culture of dismissing such abuse against boys as Nice! psychologists report that it is every bit as damaging as it is to girls.
So, why isn’t this being shouted from the media’s rooftops with the same venom as they pursued churches?
Unlike churches, education is an organisation closely ideologically allied with the media. Surveys indicate that both fields are almost completely dominated by the left. This isn’t to argue that the left is more likely to be child abusers, but that a left-biased media is far less inclined to witch-hunt their ideological fellow travellers.
In which case, shame on them, every bit as much as the bishops who shuffled known paedophiles from parish to parish.
