Is it time to retire the jokes and vilification of priests, yet? Is it time to start spitting on teachers, instead? Vandalising schools?
After all, everything the churches were guilty of – harbouring child abusers, and covering up for, if not enabling them – and have been so harshly and rightly punished for, schools are even more guilty of.
So far, though, they’ve almost entirely escaped retribution.
The scale of child abuse in schools is almost completely overlooked, in comparison to the churches. But the scale is horrifying.
In 2002, researcher Charol Shakeshaft was commissioned by the US Department of Education to carry out a study of sexual abuse in the school system. Her assessment, published in 2004, was as blunt as it is shocking.
“Think the Catholic Church has a problem? The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
Charol Shakeshaft
Shakeshaft’s research estimated that nearly 10 per cent of US public school students – 4.5 million kids – had been “the victims of sexual harassment, rape or sexual abuse”. Even allowing for rubbery definitions of things such as “sexual harassment”, that’s still a stunning indictment on the public school system – and on the media who’ve all-but-ignored the problem.
So, in order to better protect children, did media outlets start hounding the worse menace of the school systems, with headlines about a “Nationwide Teacher Molestation Cover-up” and by asking “Are Ed Schools Producing Pedophiles?”
No, they didn’t. That treatment was reserved for the Catholic Church, while the greater problem in the schools was ignored altogether.
CBS News
This isn’t just a matter of paedophiles gravitating to where the kids are. Of course they are, and of course they operate in secrecy.
But, just like Catholic hierarchy, the education hierarchy has been complicit in covering up for paedophile teachers when they’re caught.
The Tasmanian Education Department’s predominant response to child sexual abuse complaints has for decades been to ignore students, shield abusers and protect itself from legal, financial and reputational risks, an inquiry has found.
ABC Australia
It’s not just Tasmania. The notorious Chris Dawson case exposed sex rings operating among teachers in Sydney’s northern beaches.
Now, yet another case has been prosecuted – with barely a ripple of attention in the media.
A former high school music teacher and his boyfriend have pleaded guilty to possessing child abuse material and a string of separate child sex offences.
Benjamin Heels, 33, and his partner Tristan Cullinan-Smayle, appeared together via videolink at the County Court of Victoria on Thursday.
Combined, the couple have admitted to more than 60 charges.
When they say “former”, they’re not talking about some retired teacher who abused girls in the 60s or 70s. Heels is only a “former” teacher because he was finally caught, last year.
Heels, a teacher at Melbourne’s Fountain Gate Secondary College, pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual conduct with a child under 16 […]
His boyfriend admitted to using a carriage service to encourage a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity during an incident in 2017. Cullinan-Smayle, 33, will also plead guilty to transmitting and possessing child abuse material.
Heels’ offending occurred over a four-and-a-half month period, between January 1 and May 14, 2021.
Daily Mail
It’s yet another in a seeming string of teachers being prosecuted for child-sex offenders. The ones who got caught, anyway.
Where are the media exposés?
Even when Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was holding hearings that showed that schools were more likely to be centres of abuse than churches, the ABC chose to relentlessly focus on the churches.
It’s almost like they have an agenda that has little to do with fearlessly exposing child abuse wherever it happens.
