Entries Tagged 'Child Abuse' ↓

There is an increasing trend for fashion houses to glamorise death. The obsession with beautiful dead women has seen a number of recent ad campaigns idolise death, murder and suicide in women’s fashion. Young girls are being told that you can even look sexy when you are dead.

Taking the theme of ‘dead women are sexy’, Gucci recently featured a new ad campaign shot in Marrakech which showed models lying lifeless in the desert sand.

More disturbingly are the more graphic ads which further suggest that the model’s demise has been the result of male violence. Ads like Duncan Quinn show a man in a smart suit who has clearly strangled a woman. She is wearing nothing but sexy underwear and is lying motionless on the bonnet of a car.

Another ad by Dolce and Gabbana (later banned in Italy) featured a woman being pinned down by a man while a group of men looked on (waiting their turn?) the scene looked like a gang rape, and yet it was actually selling shoes.

Author of Getting Real and Generation Next speaker, Melinda Tankard Reist is a long standing campaigner for the portrayal of sexualisation and violence against women in the media to be banned.

“All these images and messages make a mockery of global campaigns to stop the abuse of women. They feed violence, fuel violence and contribute to an environment which every day becomes more dangerous for women and girls” she said.

Now to suicide – The South Korean fashion label Lewitt recently engaged American photographer Ryan McGinley to make a video promoting their brand of clothing.

It featured Australian model Abbey Lee Kershaw and was apparently inspired by Alice in Wonderland. However the clip depicts Kershaw jumping from a tall building rather than falling down something. Her climb to the top of the building, hesitation before jumping and free fall as she tumbles down over the building all feature multiple changes of wardrobe.

But Alice in Wonderland wasn’t climbing a very tall building with the intent of throwing herself off, oh no, she fell down a rabbit hole and it was an accident.

Adolescent psychologist and Generation Next speaker Dr Michael Carr-Gregg commented that it seemed like an odd concept for promoting fashion to young women in a country that boasts one of the world’s highest female suicide rates. Odder still, given that seven models have committed suicide in the last 2 years (4 by jumping), including South Korea’s Daul Kim who committed suicide in November 2009.

The data showed that 18.7 out of every 100,000 South Korean women committed suicide in 2008 while suicide rates in other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries remained stable (source: World Health Organisation 2008).

Julie Gale, founder of Kids Free 2B Kids suggested calling for a protocol where these themes are not used. Just like newspapers have an ethic of not reporting suicides. She went on to say that the Advisory Group on Body Image set up by Youth Minister Kate Ellis in March 2009, should be looking into advertising which depicts acts of self harm such as suicide as glamorous and something to aspire to.

At the time of the launch she said “The Advisory Group will help to develop a new Voluntary Industry Code of Conduct on Body Image, and provide advice to the Government on a national response.”

“Young Australians are telling us loud and clear that they are concerned about negative body image and the impact that it has on them, their friends and the community,” said Ms Ellis.

“This is a very complex issue and the Government believes the most affective approach is to work in partnership with the media, health sector, fashion industry and young people themselves to develop a national approach to tackle negative body image in a coordinated and targeted way.”

Melinda Tankard Reist, when talking about suicide and body image said “now Lindsay Lohan, soaked in blood, is showing us you can still sell yourself as a sex object while threatening to kill yourself.”

She added “self harm is the highest cause of hospital admission for girls aged 13 to 19 in Australia. Should it be treated so lightly? Should it be seen as something you do if you want to be seen as hot and sexy? Branding yourself with blood as some kind of artistic statement?”

Writer Helen Splarn. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.
Source: Dr Michael Carr-Gregg. Melinda Tankard Reist. Kids Free 2B Kids (Julie Gale)

The online classified ads website Craigslist set up by American Mr. Craig Newmark, which has classified advertisements all around the world including Australia has been accused of posting ads that sell sex. The ‘adult services’ section on his website is used by many people who deal in human trafficking and pimps who place ads which sell young people for sex.

One such girl (MC), aged only 17 years of age said ”I was first forced into prostitution when I was 11 years old by a 28-year-old man,” she wrote. ”I am not an exception.”

According to police and anti-trafficking activists the internet has now become the number one way to sell women for sex. It’s fast and easy for pimps and reasonably safe for those who pay for sex; they can now browse online from the comfort of their own home rather than combing the streets.

Of all the online sites that offer “adult services,” Craigslist is one of the most popular. It is regularly used by about 50 million Americans who can buy everything from antiques to toys and ads that provide service, jobs and gigs.

There online adult services ads make it the target of a nationwide campaign against internet prostitution. This campaign is being led by FAIR Fund, a Washington based non profit organisation that works to protect young people who are at high risk or have been exploited via human trafficking and sexual violence.

Andrea Powell, head of FAIR Fund called Craigslist ”the Wal-Mart of online sex trafficking’’ and added “most of the young women we’ve worked with who have been exploited online talk about Craigslist.”

The revelations by girls who appear in these ads include the account of AK, who said she had been sold for sex by the hour at truck stops after running away from home.

After pressure and threats of legal action from prosecutors in 43 US states, Mr. Newmark has agreed to monitor the ads, however this is proving both difficult and a conflict of interest for Craigslist as the ‘adults services’ section of the website brings in about $U36million in revenue each year, with each ad costing $U10 to place, that is a lot of ads.

Connecticut’s attorney-general called for Craigslist to shut down its ”adult section” completely.

Writer Helen Splarn. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha
Source: The Washington Post, FAIR Fund

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald by columnist Miranda Devine was a hard read; the very subject matter curdled the stomach and made the insides squirm in an effort to escape it.

The subject matter was paedophiles and how easily they gain both the trust of parents and access to the innocent children that become their victims.

The other disturbing aspect of the article lay in the fact that society doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge and address the horrors of child abuse in order to help protect the next generation, the innocent children, who are falling victim to an sexual, physical, mental and emotional abuse.

As Miranda points out, ‘how did we arrive at a circumstance in which a 56-year-old man is convicted in the NSW District Court this week of sexually abusing eight children aged from 12 months to 14 years, videotaping thousands of unspeakable crimes, and barely a comment is made?”

The trial in question was that of David Shane Whitby whose reign of terror lasted more than a decade, in which time he video-taped his despicable acts against innocent children. In one video he allegedly said “I love to molest children …. I am a child molester and transvestite … I have molested so many children”.

The list of charges read like an ‘R’ rated horror story and included 73 counts of sexual intercourse with a child aged between 10 and 14 years old. It is small consolation that he will be sentenced in September.

A police officer who works in child protection said ”they were poor single mothers doing it tough and they were conned by a predator … Whitby will be remembered as the worst paedophile in Australia’s history, in terms of number of victims, number of crimes and the extremely sick nature of the crimes … No one in child protection has ever seen anything like this.”

Traditionally the ‘family’ has formed the threads of our social fabric and yet because of changes in society during the last 40 years the social fabric that holds our community together is being ripped apart by society itself.

Gone are the days when the family was made up of a working father and a stay at home mother. Couples are marrying later and having fewer families. Today the term ‘family’ can be applied to step-parents, single parents, blended families, defacto relationships and same sex parents.

In essence change is good and these new lifestyle choices are merely a response to the world we now live in, but are they also unwittingly undermining the strength of the ‘family’ on which our society is built?

In the UK Sir Paul Coleridge, a Family Court judge, caused controversy last year when he addressed the Family Holiday Association and suggested that the state of marriage should be upheld and that those who destroy family life should be held accountable.

He described what he sees in court as a ”never-ending carnival of human misery … I have witnessed the damage done [to children] by the endless game of ‘musical relationships’, or ‘pass the partner’, in which a significant portion of the population is engaged”.

Sir Coleridge’s views might be considered old fashioned by some, but he had a point when he said “surely the test of any social change is whether it enhances people’s lives or makes them more miserable. And this is where I take issue with the modern view of the family. If it is so successful, why are the statistics for separation so large?”.
 
“More significantly, why are the family courts overwhelmed with cases involving damaged, miserable or disturbed children? How do other children, caught up in less serious separations, really feel? Do they relish the endless changes of partner, or adapting to a new step-parent and step-siblings?” he added.

So the question remains; how can our children be protected in a world where predators can easily enter their lives because of the breakdown in family values? If their parents cannot protect them, then who can?

How, we might ask ourselves, can a man like Whitby get so close to these vulnerable children?  The answer is ‘easily’ when you look at the recent case of a father who was awarded custody of his daughter, despite the fact that he has a known history of heroin addiction and sex offences.

He was given custody simply because the mother was even less able to protect and take care of her daughter than he was, as she had a string of shoplifting, drug and prostitution related convictions to her name.

The magistrate reasoned that “the father provides calmer parenting with more clearly set boundaries than the mother does,” adding that “a history of inadequate supervision combined with heroin and marijuana use create a serious concern that (the girl) may be neglected by her mother”.

Joe Tucci of The Australian childhood Foundation said “children shouldn’t ever be placed in a situation where the rights of the parents . . . override their right to protection,” he said.

“The decision should be about whether a child is safe or not, not which parent is the better to look after them.

As Miranda Devine points out “it is the community’s responsibility to rebuild social norms destroyed through the social revolution of the past 40 years.”

Writer Helen Splarn. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald. Speech by Sir Paul Coleridge.

Cold hard facts about perpetrators

• 23% are known to the child
• 15% are the natural father of the child
• 12% are either the stepfather or de facto of the child
• 1,831 charges of child abuse were laid in 2009, and
• 451 arrests following reported sex crimes in 2009*

A silent epidemic is destroying the childhood and innocence of many children in NSW as the reported cases of child abuse crimes quadruple since 2004.

The NSW State Joint Investigation Response Squad (JIRS) is working to ensure the provision of a specialist child protection service. It supports Local Area Commands across NSW and works in partnership with the NSW Department of Community Services (DoCS) and NSW Department of Health (Health). It also operates in close association with the Sex Crimes Squad.

The squad is currently investigating over 3,000 cases which some victims as young as two or three years old. “In (most) cases in the last year, the offender was known in some way or another to the victim,” said Detective Superintendent  Devaney, Head of the State Crime Command’s Joint Investigation Response Squad, he went on to say ” any instance of child sex assault or significant physical assault should never happen.”

Because family members are often behind these acts, many of the children are unable to alert anyone to what they are being subjected to; they feel confused because the sacred bond of trust has been broken.  15% of the cases being investigated involve the child’s natural father, 12% involve a stepfather or defacto and 6% other close family members.

Acting State Crime Commander Geoff Beresford said “offenders instil a lot of fear in a child,” and they are unable to tell anyone. The squad often rely on information given to them by neighbours and schools. Victims carry deep scars for the rest of their lives any spend many years struggling with the consequences of another person’s vial act upon them.

Writer Helen Splarn. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha

Source: *Sunday Telegraph