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Keywords: Sexual Abuse

  • AUSTRALIA

    For better laws on family violence, we need better data

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 June 2024

    In addressing family violence, the immediate emphasis must be to protect women and children. But if the only response is harsher penalties in addressing any social problem, it is bound to be ineffective. Regulation depends also on understanding why people are drawn to behave badly and how the culture that supports it can be changed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What's the harm in a bit of porn?

    • Bill Farrelly, David Halliday
    • 30 May 2024

    We don’t need more statistics to prove that addiction to alcohol, gambling and illegal drugs plays a huge role in domestic violence. But what about addiction to pornography? Until now, public conversation on this has been minimal. Despite a wealth of research linking pornography consumption with sexual violence, why are we so afraid to discuss this elephant?

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  • RELIGION

    Painful times for Church reformers

    • John Warhurst
    • 29 May 2024

    We are now witnessing a changed dynamic within the movement for church reform. The balance within its component parts has changed towards a more pessimistic view. A minority is still hopeful; a few even remain optimistic, but most are struggling.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sins of the fathers

    • Ken Haley
    • 29 March 2024
    2 Comments

    Recent years have made clerical child sexual abuse a badge of shame within Australia’s Catholic hierarchy, and rightly so. But Anne Manne’s new book, Sins of the fathers, will give pause to those who blame these offences on the rule of hieratic celibacy.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2023: The Empty Honour Board

    • Michele Gierck
    • 11 January 2024

    In his latest book, The Empty Honour Board: A School Memoir, Martin Flanagan reckons with the legacy of abuse in the Catholic Church by looking back at his experiences at boarding school in Tasmania. In an interview with Michele Gierck for Eureka Street, Martin talks about the process of uncovering what happened all those years ago. 

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  • RELIGION

    The Empty Honour Board: In Conversation with Martin Flanagan

    • Michele Gierck
    • 18 August 2023
    5 Comments

    In his latest book, The Empty Honour Board: A School Memoir, Martin Flanagan reckons with the legacy of abuse in the Catholic Church by looking back at his experiences at boarding school in Tasmania. In an interview with Michele Gierck for Eureka Street, Martin talks about the process of uncovering what happened all those years ago. 

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  • RELIGION

    Professional supervision after the Royal Commission

    • Jamie Calder
    • 21 June 2023
    5 Comments

    The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made a recommendation for professional supervision within religious and pastoral environments. But can professional supervision repair broken trust, ensure accountability, and promote a more ethical approach to care in the face of past failings?

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2022: What now for senior clergy who covered up abuse?

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 12 January 2023

    Many Catholics will have found the news from Germany this past week painful. A law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. Running to 1,000 pages, the report is shocking: it lists at least 497 victims for the period 1945–2019 and identifies 235 probable offenders including 173 priests and nine deacons.

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  • RELIGION

    Roe vs Wade: The Bishops’ dilemma

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 26 May 2022
    19 Comments

    News leaked earlier this month that the US Supreme Court plans to overturn its most famous decision, that in Roe vs Wade (1973) which protects a pregnant woman's freedom to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. The decision has attracted much criticism both in the past and now on account of its dubious legal reasoning – in particular, its attempt to link the right to abort to a right to privacy which itself was notional and not specified in the US Constitution.

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  • RELIGION

    What now for senior clergy who covered up abuse?

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 27 January 2022
    31 Comments

    Many Catholics will have found the news from Germany this past week painful. A law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. Running to 1,000 pages, the report is shocking: it lists at least 497 victims for the period 1945–2019 and identifies 235 probable offenders including 173 priests and nine deacons.

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  • RELIGION

    Is it time to re-think seminaries?

    • Gideon Goosen
    • 23 September 2021
    60 Comments

    The Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse identified clericalism as a significant contributor to abuse across religious institutions Australia-wide. Clericalism is rooted in a theological belief that the clergy are different to the laity, having undergone an ‘ontological change’ at ordination, and feeds the notion that the clergy may not be challenged. And according to the report, the culture of clericalism is on the rise in seminaries in Australia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Parallels between the military and the church

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 December 2020
    31 Comments

    The Australian community and its government are struggling to come to terms with the extremely serious allegations against members of the SAS for their alleged criminal misconduct during the war in Afghanistan. At the same time, we Catholics are experiencing a bad case of déjà as there are many echoes of how we felt when the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RC) began in 2013.

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