Australian Mainstream media (MSM) resolutely ignore horrendous Australian realities, not least of which is horrendous Australian child sexual abuse - a total of 4.4 million Australian adults today out of a national population of 23 million have been sexually abused as children. The Australian Government has announced a Royal Commission into institutional child sexual abuse in Australia but the Government and Australian Mainstream media (MSM) ignore the horrible reality that expert scholarly research indicates that 3.0 million Australian women, 1.4 million Australian men and a total of 4.4 million Australian adults today out of a national population of 23 million have been sexually abused as children. The Australian Government has called for submissions re the terms of reference of the Royal Commission - below is my submission that concludes with this RECOMMENDATION: THE ROYAL COMMISSION SHOULD CONSIDER ALL OF THE 4.4 MILLION AUSTRALIAN CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS.
SUBMISSION BY DR GIDEON POLYA RE TERMS OF REFERENCE OF PROPOSED ROYAL COMMISSION INTO CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IN AUSTRALIA (SUBMITTED 9.17 AM, MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2012)
The Australian Labor Federal Government has announced an urgently required Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, other churches and other institutions. However while Mainstream media and politicians are concerned with victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and religious personnel that total 3,000 to 40,000 over the last 80 years, expert scholarly research indicates that 3.0 million Australian women, 1.4 million Australian men and a total of 4.4 million Australian adults today out of a national population of 23 million have been sexually abused as children.
According to a recent report: “Australia's Roman Catholic Church has confirmed that more than 600 children have been sexually abused by its priests since the 1930s in the state of Victoria. The archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, described the figures as "horrific and shameful". The admission came in a submission to a state parliamentary inquiry into the handling of abuse cases, however campaigners say the true figure could be up to 10,000 victims. The church said the 620 cases went back 80 years with the majority taking place between the 1960s and the 1980s, with another 45 cases being investigated” (Al Jazeera, “Australian Catholic Church admits child sex abuse”, 22 September 2012: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/09/201292255516766599.html ).
However this is the tip of the iceberg as revealed by the “Little Children are Sacred” Report into child abuse in Northern Territory Indigenous Australian communities (see “Little Children are Sacred”: http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf ) . There is no doubt from the shocking anecdotal accounts in the Report that from a qualitative perspective Aboriginal Child Sexual Abuse is occurring and must be urgently stopped. However the Report (p57) states that “it is not possible to accurately estimate the extent of child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory”.
Decent, anti-racist Australians support provision of more police, doctors, nurses, welfare workers, teachers and decent housing - and improved social conditions in general - for remote Aboriginal communities, communities that are deprived by successive racist Australian Lib-Lab (Liberal –Laboral, Coalition or Labor) Governments of so many of the services that White Australians take for granted. The “Little Children are Sacred” Report recommendation #1 asked for such services - but also said that they should be provided in a sensible and consultative way. However this recommendation has been grossly violated by the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Howard Government that with Labor Opposition support sent in the army in battle dress, seizing Land - which is sacred to Aborigines and indeed to White Australians - and acting in a racially-selective way, i.e. a racist way, by removing Northern Territory Indigenous Australians from the protection of the1975 Racial Discrimination Act.
In contrast to its inability to quantitate the extent of child abuse in Indigenous communities, , the “Little Children are Sacred” Report (pp234-236) refers to studies in America indicating that 25% of females and 10% of males experience childhood sexual abuse (Finkelhor, D. (1994), Current information on the scope and nature of child sexual abuse”, Future of Children, 4(2), pp31-53), and in Australia indicating that 34% of females and 16% of males today experienced child sexual abuse (Dunne, M.P., Purdie, D.M., Cook, M.D., Boyle, F.M. & Najman, J.M.(2003), Is child sexual abuse declining? Evidence from a population-based survey of men and women in Australia, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 27 (2), pp141-152).
If one translates these Australian child abuse statistics to the 2010 UN Population Division data for the number of adult Australian women (8,825,000) and adult Australian men (8, 614,000) one can estimate that 0.34 x 8.825,000 = 3,000,500 or roughly 3.0 million Australian women, 0.16 x 8,613,000 = 1,378,240 or roughly 1.4 million Australian men, and roughly 4.4 million Australian adults have been sexually abused as children.
The upper estimate of children sexually abused by priests and other religious monks, nuns or brothers of the Catholic Church over the last 80 years has been put at 10,000 in Victoria (2012 population 5,603,000) and hence 10,000 x 22,597,000/ 5,603,000 = 40,330 for the whole of Australia (2012 population 22,597,000) and hence 40,330 x 100/4,400,000 = 0.9% of the total number of current Australian adults who have suffered child sexual abuse.
If we take the lower estimate from the Catholic Church of 665 cases of clerical child sexual abuse in Victoria, the nation-wide estimate would be 665 x 22,597,000/5,603,000 = 2,682 such cases nationwide, this corresponding to 2,603 x 100/ 4,400,000 = 0.06% of the total number of current Australian adults who have suffered child sexual abuse.
Yet the endlessly lying Mainstream media in look-the-other-way Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy Australia concentrate on the less than 1% of sexual abuse cases involving Catholic clergy and ignore the horrible reality that a substantial proportion of the ignored 4.4 million child sexual abuse victims were violated in the home.
Thus, for example, a search of the “entire ABC site” (the ABC being Australia’s equivalent of the UK BBC) for the term “Is child sexual abuse declining?” (part of the title of the key Australian child abuse paper quoted above) or for the lead author as “Dunne, M.P.” or “M.P. Dunne” reveals zero (0) reportage. Australia simply does not want to know about the large-scale child sexual abuse entrenched in its society.
There are three major reasons for this extraordinary national myopia.
(1). Australians are inordinately proud of their country and hence anything, no matter how enormous, is permitted to diminish the national reputation. Thus, for example, on the occasion of the US withdrawal from devastated Iraq, the ABC (the Australian equivalent of the UK BBC) reported that “tens of thousands” of Iraqis had been killed – yet the awful reality is that since 1990 violent Iraqi deaths have totaled 1.7 million, avoidable deaths from sanctions- and war-imposed deprivation have totaled 2.9 million, and under-5 year old infant deaths have totaled 2.0 million, 90% avoidable and due to gross violation of the Geneva Convention by the US alliance (that included Australia from 1990 onwards (see “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/geneva-convention ).
(2). Australian media have an appalling record of lying by commission, lying by omission, censorship and self-censorship. Part of this derives from limited and right-wing oligopoly ownership (70% of daily newspaper readership is controlled by the extreme right-wing US Murdoch media empire) and subjection to the voluntary D-notice system of government-requested censorship “in the national interest”.
(3). A substantial part of the dominant Anglo-Celtic Australian population derives from Catholic and Presbyterian Scots fleeing the Scottish Highland Clearances (the Scottish Genocide; see John Prebble’s book “The Highland Clearances”) and Irish Catholics fleeing the 1840s Irish Famine (1 million starved to death and 2 million fled overseas to North America or Australasia in this English-imposed Irish Holocaust and Irish Genocide). In Australia a secretive, male-only and fiercely anti-Catholic Presbyterian Scots freemasonry became an integral part of small-town-to-city business, government and institutions to the exclusion of Catholics, although this secret, exclusive domination has formally diminished in recent decades. Australia is now dominated at middle-to-high levels by a wider grouping of what can be called Pacmen (Prosperous Anglo-Celtic Men) as well as at the top by corporations, Zionists and US lackeys in a neoliberal, corporatist political state that can be described as a Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy. No better example of this significantly Scots freemasonry-influenced, Australian Anglo-Celtic Establishment culture is given by the Establishment University of Melbourne that has an appalling and worsening record of censorship that is antithetical to scholarship and to public risk management (for a detailed analysis Google "Academic censorship: why you should NOT study at the University of Melbourne": http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article22283 ). Nevertheless, the traditional anti-Catholicism remains, albeit now under a veneer of political correctness, as evidenced by the appalling, false, defamatory abuse heaped on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, a Catholic, by the Labor Government and its supporters. Indeed the ferocious attacks on Tony Abbott have apparently restored Labor’s electoral fortunes from a disastrous wipe-out position of several months ago to a neck-and-neck position with the Coalition Opposition. And, of course, part of the Labor anti-Catholicism derives from the over 2 decades in which the Catholic extremist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) kept Labor from office.
The biggest child abusers in Australia in the last few decades have been Australian Governments which have been complicit in the following child abuse atrocities:
(1). There have been 2.9 million under-5 year old infant deaths in Occupied Afghanistan since 2001, 90% avoidable and due to gross violation of the Geneva Convention by the US Alliance, including Australia (indeed the pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey Labor Government is making noises about keeping Australian forces in Afghanistan after 2014 i.e. after everyone else has left) (see “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ).
(2). There have been 2.0 million under-5 year old infant deaths in Iraq since 1990, 90% avoidable and due to gross violation of the Geneva Convention by the US Alliance, including Australia.
(3). The pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey Australian Labor Government supports US nuclear terrorism and US state terrorism but is an enthusiastic part of Zionist-urged Sanctions against nuclear weapons-free and peaceful Iran that can be estimated to kill 100,000 Iranians each year, about half of whom are children.
(4). Under the viciously pro-Zionist Australian Labor Government donations to the Palestinian Genocide can be tax-deductible. Australia is the best friend , after the US, UK and Canada, to Apartheid Israel which deliberately kills about 3,000 Occupied Palestinian under-5 year old infants each year through cold-blooded deprivation.
(5). In the ongoing Aboriginal Genocide about 9,000 Indigenous Australians die avoidably every year but the proportion who are under 18 is not clear. The Aboriginal under-5 infant mortality rate is about 3 times greater than that of White Australians.
(6). Neoliberal Labor supports an Educational Apartheid system (see “Educational Apartheid”: https://sites.google.com/site/educationalapartheid/ ) that disproportionately excludes the majority of Australian children from decent education, university, top universities and top courses. In contrast, this Educational Apartheid lavishes taxpayer funding on private religious schools as well as religious chaplaincy for State schools. The Labor Government is accordingly complicit in massive intellectual child abuse applied to millions of Australian children who are variously falsely and obscenely brainwashed with superstitious claptrap, creationism, intelligent design, homophobia, sexism, sexual guilt, unsafe sex, racism, ultra-nationalism and support for the invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of other countries.
(7). The pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey Australian Labor Government is committed to the US War on Terror and the consequent accrual cost to Australia of this dishonest, racist obscenity has been estimated at $125 billion (by way of comparison, the national GDP is about $1, 370 billion). This huge fiscal perversion contributes to the deaths of the 66,000 Australians who die preventably each year and a miserable life for millions of Australian children, 14.7% or about 700,000 of whom live below the poverty line (see “Endless War on Terror. Huge Cost for Australia & America”, MWC News, 14 October 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/22149-endless-war-on-terror.html ) .
(8). While being complicit in the generation of over 20 million Muslim refugees by the endlessly war-making, Zionist-beholden US Alliance, Australia has drawn the ire of the UN Human Rights Commission for highly abusive, indefinite and punitive imprisonment of hundreds of child refugees (as well as thousands of adult refugees) in remote concentration camps without charge or trial.
Summary.
About 3.0 million Australian women, 1.4 million Australian men and a total of 4.4 million Australian adults today out of a national population of 23 million have been sexually abused as children. Yet Australian media utterly ignore this huge national disgrace and largely confine their attention to the sexual abuse of 3,000-40,000 Australian children over the last 80 years by Catholic clergy and Catholic religious personnel. The Australian Labor Government has been complicit in the massive abuse of children at home, 700,000 of whom live in poverty, and in horrendous abuse of children abroad, notably in Iraq since 1990) and Afghanistan (since 2001), where under-5 infant deaths have totaled 2.0 million and 2.9 million, respectively, 90% avoidable and due to gross violation of the Geneva Convention by the US Alliance and Australia.
What can decent people do about this massive, ongoing Australian abuse of children? Decent folk must (a) inform everyone they can and (b) urge boycotts and sanctions against people, politicians, parties and corporations complicit in these atrocities. Decent people outside Australia should consider Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as were successfully applied to Apartheid South Africa and are currently being applied against Australia-supported, nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel. Decent Australians should vote 1 Green and put child abusers last.
RECOMMENDATION: THE ROYAL COMMISSION SHOULD CONSIDER ALL OF THE 4.4 MILLION AUSTRALIAN CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS.
This was written in the public interest.
Dr Gideon Polya, Macleod, Melbourne
Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .