Baby With The Bathwater: Is Child Protection Creating New Kinds Of Trauma?
When an old man watching his six-year-old granddaughter play on Balmoral Beach gets the cops called on him, you've got to ask: has our society's caution reached levels of hysteria?
Once upon a time in a fairytale, the big bad wolf was the only predator we needed to protect our children from. This predator was easily spotted, and easily avoided (if you’re smart, anyway): a different species to the rest of us; a strange, wild animal, prowling the woods alone and mostly after dark. A foreigner to society. A monster. We only needed to teach our little ones to stick to familiar paths, never stopping to talk to unscrupulous strangers, and we could be confident they would make it to grandma’s house unharmed.
The stranger danger fairytale was much easier for us to come to terms with, and act upon, than the reality we now understand: that most of the wolves in our society are not just dressed in grandma’s clothing, they are grandma — or grandpa, auntie, uncle, mum, dad, sibling, neighbour, teacher, doctor, priest, or a friend we thought we could trust.
Knowing this – that the abuse of children is probably far more rampant in our society than we’d care to imagine, and that the people most likely to abuse are those we trust, people in our families and friendship circles – it’s understandable that anxiety and paranoia about how adults (especially men) and children interact has become regulation. But is it right?
On Dog-Whistling, Scapegoating And The Hunt
Last Sunday, as hearings were poised to begin for the Catholic Church abuse inquiry, a grandfather made the Sun Herald front page after letting his six-year-old granddaughter take a dip at Balmoral beach without her swimmers. Yesterday, stories of countless other fathers and grandfathers who’d felt singled out and harassed — detained by supermarket staff because of a child’s tantrum; subjected to an inquiry after a bit of roughhouse play caused a bruise on the bottom; cornered by police with tasers after an innocent day at the beach; forced to produce paperwork proving a parental relationship — were aired in response.
It was against this backdrop that I saw the new and acclaimed Danish film, The Hunt. The film explores how dealing with abuse allegations within a culture of paranoia and suspicion can wreak destruction on communities. How easily a completely innocent, quite minor incident – when combined with miscommunication, misunderstanding and misjudgement – can explode into a full-blown witch hunt that tears a town apart, making victims of everyone involved.
The Hunt’s storyline unfolds beautifully, horribly, like a slow-motion multi-car pile-up that just keeps exploding long after the vehicles have crumbled to a halt. The trouble begins when some older boys messing about with an iPad at home show the much younger Klara a picture of an erect penis from the internet. Later at kindy, she tries to kiss Lucas — the teacher who also happens to be her dad’s best friend — during a game with other kids. He tells her that’s not allowed, she becomes angry, and later that day tells another teacher that she hates Lucas and his “rod”.
Despite initial attempts to address the situation with a sense of calm, the head teacher quickly reaches the conclusion that Lucas had indecently assaulted Klara. In an effort to avoid stirring up further trauma, the child is not questioned again, but the police are informed along with the rest of the parents. The process of ostracising Lucas is set; even after Klara withdraws her initial remark, the rest of the adults in the town refuse to believe her. Rather than listen to her, and admit she may have made it up, her parents and teachers convince her that she must have forgotten what “really” happened.
Once the wheels were set in motion, it was easier for the village to eliminate the perceived threat — to paint Lucas as the monster he needed to be in order to seek revenge on him — than to hit the brakes and try to get to the truth. But the consequences did not just hurt Lucas. They hurt Marcus, his son, ostracised by association; and they hurt Klara, who lost a friend and father-figure and, without understanding what exactly was happening, understood that she had started it and could do nothing to stop it.
Stay Out Of School, And Don’t Do Hugs
After watching a film like The Hunt, it’s easy to see why there are fewer men prepared to work in primary school teaching, not to mention in earlier childhood care where children need more hands-on attention. That Lucas had been alone with the Klara, having sometimes walked her to and from kindergarten, sealed his guilt in the minds of many. His charming hands-on, rough-and-tumble approach to play in hindsight seems foolish, but it was also his job to help some of the children use the toilet, which included removing clothes.
The alternative to placing himself in that situation would be to work in a different industry, or at least leave the bathroom stuff to the women — but such a move makes a sexist assumption that men cannot be trusted with children. While statistics tell us child sex abusers are overwhelmingly male, that doesn’t mean women never abuse (they made up about 5% of aggravated child sex assault convictions in 2009-10) — and it certainly doesn’t mean all men should be treated with suspicion as a rule, while women, by definition of gender, are AOK.
While we seem to be turning a corner in regards to gender roles, with more men happy to wear the stay-at-home-dad badge, at the same time we seem increasingly okay with making the assumption that there’s something unnatural about a man spending time with a child — especially if it’s an older, single man. It’s a sad irony that two of contemporary society’s major anxieties effectively perpetuate each other: we’re anxious that kids, especially boys, lack father figures — but we’re so quick to judge those men who might otherwise fill the role that, in the interests of self-preservation, many will simply avoid it.
WWPD (What Would a Paedophile Do)?
Given the prospect of child abuse and our anxieties about proper conduct, society is increasingly inviting us adults to think like child abusers — to begin to see children as potential sexual prey rather than just kids. Disturbingly, this mindset asks us to see ourselves as potential abusers, if only in the eyes of judgemental strangers.
We live in an era of constant reminders of child abuse that not only restrict everyday interactions between families and communities, but can also cause perfectly well-meaning adults to question their behaviour and read potential abuse into hugs, kisses, tickles, holding hands, physical play and bathtime. We have rules prohibiting parents from photographing their own children at a school swimming carnival; teens being warned that texting a photo of their boobs to a friend is technically child pornography; teachers being told never to hug a student or allow themselves to be alone in a room with less than two at a time; dads who won’t let other people’s children stay the night unless their female partner is home; people calling the police because a six-year-old being supervised by her grandfather is swimming nude at a public beach; and media beat-ups about clothes and toys that apparently ‘sexualise children’.
One of the bikinis being sold on Goop, for $45
Last month, after Gwyneth Paltrow’s website began promoting a line of bikinis for children as young as four, Kristan Dooley, managing director of the conservative Women’s Forum Australia (which campaigns on issues like body image, domestic violence, abortion and euthanasia, as well as ‘the sexualisation of children’), expressed concern about the swimsuits, which she described as “scaled down versions of women’s clothing that are intended to arouse sexual interest”. She said that while it is normal for young girls to want to dress like their mothers, “they have little understanding about what it means to be sexy, and they don’t understand sexualised behaviour or the consequences of dressing in a way that draws inappropriate attention to their bodies”.
I have a few questions for Ms Dooley. What would she prefer to see young girls wearing at the beach? Will a one-piece deter the big bad wolf, or do they need something to the ankles, perhaps with a hood? Does she think young boys in speedos are also dressing provocatively, given they have even less covered up? Are naked children “asking for it”?
The Double-Edged Sword Of Child Protection Campaigns
Last Sunday at Balmoral Beach, Leo — the grandfather of six-year-old Emma — had to ask himself whether whoever had called the police on him would have done so even if she’d kept her T-shirt on, or (and I’m going to go with a ‘yes’ here) whether his age or sex would have made a difference. The anonymous tip-off didn’t just leave him feeling scrutinised and persecuted though: Emma knew something was wrong, and she told her mother later that night she “did something wrong”. Suddenly, and too soon, a small child goes from being completely carefree and unselfconscious, to realising her body’s visibility has “consequences” — all because an anonymous member of the public found suspicious the fact that she wasn’t wearing much at the beach, and the person looking after her was an older man. That child has now lost a piece of the very innocence we’re all so desperately trying to protect, while an important member of her safety net is second-guessing his involvement with her.
Speaking with the Sun Herald yesterday, National Children’s Commissioner Megan Mitchell pointed out that the chain of events that can be sparked by calling DOCS or the police can traumatise kids and cause the parent, relative, or carer in question to step back from their role. She said relationships like those between children and grandparents are “absolutely critical in terms of stability”, and that it’s “fantastic — and essential — that children have a range of trusted adults around them.”
What’s most disturbing, but thoroughly unsurprising, is that Australia’s highest-profile child protection campaigner, Hetty Johnston of Bravehearts, weighed in to say that the anonymous tip-off to police is “what, we hope, everyone now does in such situations,” adding “it turned out to be a false alarm and that’s great”. Likewise, the police invoked the “better to be safe than sorry” response, applauding the person who made the call.
Aside from the sexist, ageist stereotype that was the genesis of these false alarm bells, the cowardly act of anonymous whistleblowing hardly came without consequences to the child. To suggest that it’s a good thing for our society to become so suspicious, paranoid and downright spineless that we not only read abuse into a most-likely innocent situation, but call the cops instead of speaking to each other first, is to be completely insensitive to the fact that kids might be traumatised by police showing up to ask them why they’re not wearing any clothes and why that man is holding their hand. Cops might be tops, but they’re also pretty terrifying to most of us — especially those of us who are less than four feet tall, and whose understanding of police is that they chase down baddies and lock them in jail.
Hetty Johnston came under fire recently after a parent complained that the organisation’s educational show and Keep Safe program for schools was using “fear-based psychology”. As detailed via The Drum, New South Wales dad Daniel Jeffares was understandably concerned about the booklet’s prescription that mouths and chests are “private parts” adults shouldn’t touch, and the suggestion that children should question their trust of parents and loved ones (although they can totally trust police and Bravehearts, obvs!). Johnston’s response was defensive to say the least, and she refused point blank to continue the conversation: “Our organisation uses each and every dollar given to it in the protection of children and we refuse to waste our valuable resources, in this case staff time and energy, engaging is [sic] what we assess to be, in this case, a baseless argument.”
Suspicion Keeps Us Apart
Is a culture of fear and mistrust, a blanket suspicion of men, and placing the onus on children to monitor themselves really the necessary cost of protecting our youngest and most vulnerable against sexual abuse? Or are we creating new kinds of psychological trauma, and actually weakening the social bonds that protect and support children?
Do we really think we’re protecting kids by raising them to second-guess the motives of their parents, aunties, uncles, grandparents, teachers and other grown-ups, rather than to trust them? Do we really think it’s right to have parents who are afraid to bathe, tickle and kiss their own kids or spend time with other people’s children — and in turn, kids who sense there’s something wrong with this kind of intimacy, who internalise the paranoia they witness from the adults around them? Who are embarrassed to let their guard down with grownups when they need to? Who learn to see sexuality as something scary and shameful, long before they have any real understanding of it?
It’s not our job to put ideas into the heads of children that will scare them, burden them, alienate them, or make them feel like they’ve done something wrong. That’s what child abusers do.
Equipped with the understanding we now have that the vast majority of child abusers are people children and their families know and trust, we have a couple of options to try and stop it from happening. We can just stop trusting people to look after children, remembering that the more we trust someone, the more dangerous they are. We can sharpen our senses to see the big eyes, big ears, and big teeth, lurking beneath ostensibly kind, grandmotherly exteriors. We can wrap our kids in cotton wool, clothe them at the beach, carry axes in our pockets and be ever-prepared to call in the law.
Or we can put the fairytales and scary stories to bed and open up. By reaching out and trusting each other, broadening our families and community ties, we not only offer children a healthier and more diverse environment to grow in, but we strengthen the safety net of caring people that kids can run to, in case anything ever does go wrong.
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Jenny Noyes writes from Sydney’s inner west. She enjoys music and feminism and other types of arts and politics, and making opinions about those subjects which may or may not be well-informed. You can read some of her music-related opinions in The Brag, and send her compliments @jennynoise.