Category Archives: violence

Nature, nuture and terrible headlines

*Trigger warning for discussion of rape and violence against women*

So Lionel Shriver, who I have just discovered is a woman thanks to the power of the internet and the power of my brain to attribute the name Lionel to a man, wrote an article with an incredibly poor headline on a study looking at whether or not sexual offending runs in families.  The study found that it does to an extent.

Shriver’s headline – which may have been chosen by an editor – was, “Don’t be so hysterical about sex crimes“, though the URL for the article suggests that the less alarmist headline might have been “Swedish sex study sex offenders genetic tendency behavior not preordained” at a point in time, even though that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

From the beginning of the article, Shriver writes:

Across more than 20,000 cases of male sex offences in Sweden 1973–2009, men with brothers or fathers convicted of sex offences were five times more likely than average to commit the same kind of crime. (The chances were 2.5% if sexual predation ran in the family, 0.5% among the general male population.) The study’s authors brandish numerous disclaimers: they’re not giving offenders an excuse, proposing male relatives of rapists be imprisoned or isolating a sex-abuse gene. But they believe the finding of a broad genetic proclivity paves the way for prevention strategies. As one forensic psychiatrist put it: “If interventions can be provided that are not harmful, this is an opportunity.”

Imagine being the son or brother of a man imprisoned for sexual assault – traumatic in itself. A social worker rings the doorbell. She offers therapy, anger management or gender–sensitivity training – when you’ve done nothing wrong. Wouldn’t you slam the door in her face, after telling the busybody from PreCrime where she can shove her “prevention strategies”?

Right off the bat Shriver uses emotive language.  The authors are “brandishing” disclaimers regarding the study, instead of “The study’s authors provided the following disclaimers regarding their study…” which would be much better reporting.

And yes, imagine finding out that your father or brother had sexually assaulted someone – surely most people would be horrified and would grasp at offers to help – and probably want to not be that person – unless as Shriver is suggesting, masculinity is so incredibly toxic that being just like your offending family member is a good thing.

Would you slam the door in the face of a woman (and note that especially Shriver made the social worker in this scenario a woman) wanting to help you?  Probably if you grew up in a household where women were considered less than fully human.  A proper psychiatric evaluation would have to take into account the attitude that the individuals concerned would have towards women given the environment they grew up in and the nature of the offence that their family member committed.

And I’m also suggesting that a mandatory reporter type role, as Shriver is suggesting this would be, is a “busybody” (another term only applied to women) sounds very similiar to the responses the US Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has regarding Government oversight of children who are being home schooled, that the Government doesn’t trust people, that they are interfering, and that they want to take rights away from parents.

That vision is only preposterous to an extent. Because we already treat sex offenders as if they’re genetically marked. There’s no other crime on the books that you never live down and for which you never finish paying your debt. Released sex offenders must lodge their whereabouts with the police, whether their offence was violent rape or mere voyeurism, and may be electronically tagged.

They’re required to inform police if they leave home for a week or more, and to ask permission to holiday abroad (sometimes denied). Police are licensed to identify sex offenders to members of the public. Those given sentences of more than 30 months are put permanently on the sex offenders register, like Santa Claus’s list of who’s been naughty and nice. We don’t treat these people as folk who’ve done wrong, but as folk who are wrong – hopelessly and irredeemably dangerous because of what they are.

Wow, I don’t know how many sex offenders Shriver knows, or people who have been accused of raping or sexually assaulting someone, but there are certainly a large number of them who walk around, free to travel, free to do as they please while their victim/s suffer trauma for the rest of their lives.  Roman Polanski, Jimmy Saville, Mike Tyson, R Kelly, Woody Allan, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and Tupac Shakur all seem to be going quite well regardless of their convictions or accusations.  They’re all quite wealthy which probably does play a part in why they get around so well, but get around well they certainly do.

[Update: I’ve been advised that Tupac died around 20 years ago, so is clearly not walking around enjoying himself (unless he’s come back from the dead).  This error is entirely mine and was a result of insufficient research late at night.]

One point that Shriver fails to mention is that some men are actually “hopelessly and irredeemably dangerous”.  Adrian Bayley was on parole for other sex crimes when he raped and killed Jill Meagher, he is certainly a man who is hopelessly and irredeemably dangerous.  How many chances do you give a man to redeem himself before you mark him as unredeemable and permanently dangerous?

When it’s a war against the very survival of women, shouldn’t those men who have demonstrated a complete lack of concern regarding our safety, autonomy and consent be punished and made to redeem themselves in our eyes?  Here is a list of crimes against women in Australia for just this year.  Just 2015 so far, and it grows almost every day.

And maybe those people who sexually assault and rape other people are wrong, raping and sexually assaulting people should not be part of our modern world.

In this sense, the Swedish study’s results are unwelcome. If anything, we need to dial down the hysteria over sex crimes, increasingly regarded as more horrific than murder, and allow for the possibility that some people make a mistake and don’t repeat it, even if that mistake is of a sexual sort.

Oh, we need to be less concerned about sex crimes?  I’ll just tell that to Adrian Bayley’s victims shall I?  Or perhaps the other women, myself included, who have been raped at some point.

I don’t know which world Shriver lives in where sex crimes are more horrific than murder, because the number of politicians in Australia, the UK, and the US who are doing something about sex crimes against women and children, and the number of politicians who are doing something about the murder of women is incredibly low.

There is no Royal Commission in Australia against the high levels of intimate partner violence in Australia which is at epic highs.  This year alone has seen an unprecedented number of women die at the hands of their current or past partners.

I also find Shriver’s statement that some sex crimes are “mistakes” and that people don’t repeat them problematic.  I agree that there are instances where two minors are sexually active, and one reaches the age of majority and is suddenly committing an offence – and that situation is tricky.  However, this is completely different to someone failing to consider that the person they are assaulting is saying “NO”, or is unable to provide consent, and that’s completely ok, and they won’t do it again next time.

Perhaps instead of saying that someone won’t repeat this “mistake” Shriver should be pushing for better relationship and sexual education.

We’re rounding on that hoary old “nature versus nurture” debate, always artificial. Common sense dictates that neither influence is absolute; the question is one of proportion. (Those Swedish scientists gave it a number: for sex crimes, the risk is 40% nature.)

So 60% – the bigger number is possibly environmental/nurture.  If I have a 40% chance of experiencing the side effect of a medication, then there is a 60% chance that I won’t.  For those men who have a 40% nature component and a high environmental/nurture component, then surely intervening early and ensuring that they stay out of prison by not committing crimes is a good thing.  Shriver can only think that interventions are stigmatising and possibly traumatic.  She is only looking at it from one angle and ignoring the greater good for all of society that an intervention could take – including to the individual who wouldn’t offend and end up in jail.

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Boys [and girls] should be taught [that all] sex abuse is wrong

*trigger warning for rape and sexual abuse*

So today’s WTF appears courtesy of Paul Mullen, Emeritus Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at Monash University. He’s attributed by the Age as saying:

Sex education should be expanded to teach young men not to sexually abuse children, a forensic psychiatrist has told a parliamentary inquiry in Victoria.

Paul Mullen, emeritus professor of forensic psychiatry at Monash University and the former clinical director of Forensicare, told the inquiry into the handling of child abuse that sex education needed to be revamped to prevent it.

Children “get a lot of detail, liberal sentiments, about gay or straight lifestyles. They get nothing, absolutely nothing, about the sexual abuse of children and boys’ and men’s responsibility not to perpetrate that activity,” Emeritus Professor Mullen said.

Now granted this is at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Catholic Church’s handling of rape and sexual abuse of children, but really any such statement should be broadened that all rape and sexual abuse against anyone regardless of age of gender is wrong and people should be educated in relation to that.

It’s not like Catholic Priests didn’t also rape adult women, and hush that up or suggest that perhaps it was the woman’s fault.

So Emeritus Professor Paul Mullen, what we need is education for everyone, regardless of gender, that explicitly states that the sexual abuse of anyone is wrong.  Given the high percentage of male perpetrators of sexual violence, the education should definitely be, “don’t be that guy“, but also that being raped or sexually assaulted is never the fault of the victim, but always the fault of the perpetrator.

These are important messages, and I am concerned that Emeritus Professor Paul only narrowly targeted his message when he had the opportunity to address a broader societal issue that ties into the issues of Catholic Clergy sexual abuse.

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Building a community of the future

*trigger warning – discussion of rape and other violence*

I have this idea.  I’m not sure if it would work, or even be possible, but I’d like to try it out – sadly control groups and experimental groups are lacking.

A little background might help I guess, because what I’m asking for is people’s opinions and ideas as to whether my idea is feasible, whether they’ve seen anything else similar anywhere else, and overall whether I should push this as a form of community engagement.

I’m a member of a polyamorous community in Victoria (Australia).  There has been a lot of discussion recently about how to ensure that the community remains safe and what (if any) role the committee of the incorporated organisation play in that.  There is clearly a desire for clarity around the committee’s role and what the community can expect – but this isn’t the discussion I want here, this discussion is for my idea of creating a safer community.

If the leaders of a community (whether elected official leaders or other identified leaders) expressed clear opposition to unsafe behaviours and encouraged the community to openly and safely discuss how those unsafe behaviours have affected them personally (with no mention of perpetrators) in their lives, would that create a community were those who engaged in those behaviours would not feel welcome?

That’s nice and complicated, let me break it down to a specific example.  If the committee/leaders stated that rape and other sexual crimes are behaviours that are not tolerated in the poly community, and the community was encouraged to have ongoing discussions regarding the effect that rape has had on their lives, without naming he perpetrator because this is the space for those who have experienced rape or other sex crimes, would those who believe that rape is no big deal have their minds changed, and would those who have raped or who will rape be less likely to remain in the community?  Could a community be built that does not blame victims for the crimes against them but instead supports them and talks about the damage that silence and victim blaming causes?

We don’t talk about violence against others nearly often enough in the community spaces I inhabit.  We do not express our distaste, our displeasure, our repulsion, our abhorrence against what is done by some to others.  This culture of silence often means it is easy for people to be unaware of the extent of the harm that violence causes, and also how wide-spread some forms of violence are.  If those of my community, who evidently felt safe to do so, stood up and told our stories of violence, those who don’t know would most likely be shocked at how common such things are.  I’d want the leaders (elected or generally respected) to be very clear that no one invites crimes to be committed against them and that any form of victim blaming would not be tolerated.

I feel, in an ideal world, that this could work, that a community could start to talk about the harm that violence causes, and make it a very unwelcome environment for those individuals that participate in forms of violence against others – because their viewpoints that their behaviour is ok would be challenged by people who think it is not.

I’d love other opinions on this however.

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Occupy Melbourne and Police Violence

*Trigger warning for discussion (and links to footage) of violence, particularly police violence*

Sadly police violence is a given.  It’d be great to live in a world where police violence wasn’t the norm, particularly when it came to protests of various forms, but with protests against the establishment, particularly protests that go (or stay) where the establishment don’t want them to go (or stay), shit happens far too often.

Continue reading Occupy Melbourne and Police Violence

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Sometimes you should think the worst

*trigger warning – this post discusses violence to children*

Another day, another child dies – and in the grand scheme of things not very noticeable given that 16,000 children die (on average) each day around the globe each day.  This child however was fortunate and was born in a Westernised nation (Australia), had survived bone cancer (losing a leg and perhaps her hearing – the media is unclear as to whether she was hearing impaired before cancer or not), and moved with her dad to the US when he remarried.

What is currently known is that she is missing, presumed dead and her step-mother has been listed as a person of interest in her disappearance/death.  The report in The Age quotes relatives and neighbours and their statements do not paint a pretty picture.

Relatives of a missing 10-year-old Australian girl, missing feared murdered in the US state of North Carolina, have described the child’s life as miserable, saying she was locked in her room for most of the day and was punished over little things.

“I just think this was something for a long time that we knew was going to happen, everybody that was close to the family,” relative Brittany Bentley said on CBS’ Early Show on Tuesday.

Bentley, who is married to Elisa Baker’s nephew, said she would have Zahra over for weekends and the girl would get mad when it was time to return home.

Zahra “was locked in her room, allowed five minutes out a day to eat, that was it”, Bentley said.

“She was beat almost every time I was over there for just the smallest things. Elisa would get mad, she would take it out on Zahra, things the kid didn’t deserve. She just had a horrible home life.”

“There were warning signs along the way, but you never want to think the worst,” said former neighbour Kayla Rotenberry.

Rotenberry, the former neighbour, said she and her fiance were good friends with the Bakers when they lived in the nearby town of Sawmills. About six months ago she noticed that Elisa Baker’s hand was swollen, Rotenberry said.

“She told me that she was trying to spank Zahra, but hit her on her prosthetic leg,” she said.

Another former neighbour, Brandy Stapleton, 22, of Lenoir, said that Elisa Baker told her the same story about how she injured her hand.

“She wasn’t the person everyone thought she was.”

I understand, generally, people’s unwillingness to get involved, the whole “not my problem” thing,  but in this case, had the neighbours or relatives who had witnessed or known about the abuse visited upon Zahra reported it to the authorities she may still be alive.  There have been numerous recent cases of children going missing, presumed dead where it is possible that someone reporting their concerns may have saved their life.  Overstretched child protection services do not help the problem – and governments need to move on providing well supported, trained and appropriate staff to assist vulnerable citizens.

This article really touched a nerve for me because my husband has shared his horror stories with me of physical abuse from his father that were known about by other family members and by neighbours, and no one did anything.  He was (relatively) lucky in that he survived his childhood and escaped.  But, he or his siblings might not have been so lucky through no fault of their own.

If you know or strongly suspect that a child is being abused, please report it to the relevant authorities.

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