Culture Must Change If We Are to Protect Our Children

The Chronicle
February 27, 2014

http://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/change-culture-to-protect-children/2182344/

On the Catholic Church Insurance web page about how to make a claim is the advice, "Report theft (or attempted theft), malicious damage, and loss of personal valuables to the police."

The Catholic Church also has procedures to report child sexual abuse allegations to police. My experience is that church officers comply with the insurance advice for material things.

But in Toowoomba we have seen the tragic results of failure to comply with the church's procedures for child abuse. This highlights the cultural issues that Bishop Bill Morris and others raise.

It is one thing to identify cultural issues but people often wonder what to do about them. In my line of work we find experienced and intelligent people struggle to overcome culture.

So what is the culture we are talking about here? Culture is simply what people think is normal. People conform to what is normal. People don't turn up to the workshop in their swimmers or to the beach in their boots and overalls.

Most importantly, people don't even ask what to wear to work or the beach because they know what is normal and conform.

It is this knowing what is normal and the automatic conforming that makes up culture.

In the case of child sexual abuse this can mean that decisions favour the employee and doubt the complainant. It can mean that grooming behaviours are overlooked or sanitised.

It could even mean that people with responsibilities for child protection don't get effective training or leaders don't check to ensure procedures are understood and implemented well.

It can mean any number of things but all of them reinforce that it is normal to value other things more than the protection of children. So how do schools and other organisations deal with this?

Firstly, change the conversation. Assume children are being abused, not necessarily by school staff but by people in the extended community.

Some figures suggest that one in seven boys and one in four girls are sexually abused. In a co-ed school this is about 20% of students. So ask how many children go to your child's school and divide that by five.

Secondly, realise that the school staff aren't where most of the danger lies. The danger lies in homes and neighbourhoods, with relatives and friends. So thirdly, what do we do in the face of this clear and present threat to children? No-one wants a culture of suspicion, allegation and libel. So let's build a culture of prevention.

In workplaces we have successfully adopted a culture of health and safety by encouraging people to take risk seriously. People identify hazards and deal with them. Here is the clue.

Sexual abuse is usually preceded by grooming. Abusers need to be liked and trusted to get access to children. So maybe if people look for signs of grooming we can prevent harm.

We can look for inappropriate ways of relating, over eagerness to become special, and cross-generational needs for affection not supported by a healthy set of adult relationships.

But firstly we all have to get an education about what grooming looks like.

Most importantly we don't have to accuse anyone of anything they haven't done. It is enough to say, "Please don't deal with my child this way." Don't keep holding them.

Don't keep taking the child away from the group. Stop calling it a special friendship. The only explanation we need to give is that we don't want our child to behave that way because it puts them at risk if someone nasty comes along.

Some overseas research suggests that this kind of intervention can be effective at protecting children and preventing some adults from crossing the line and becoming abusers.

The bottom line is that we adults are responsible for protecting children. But clearly we all live in a culture that is not very effective at doing this which it comes to child sexual abuse. It's time for all of us to change the culture.