Barbara, I am a bit awed by your courage.

TurnRightThenLeft says it for me:

"I'm lucky - Growing up, I never come across an instance of child sexual abuse... It never occurred to me, or anyone I knew of. I've heard vague allusions to it in more recent years... I guess being shielded from it has made me somewhat unaware of it's significance."

We thrash out issues on OLO. We make the effort to put ourselves in another person's shoes, in order to understand their point of view. But this one is tricky. Where is the means, method and motive?

Marlene (my beloved - who was not abused either) insists that it is not really sexual, but has to do with power and control exercised by weak people who cannot cut it with their physical and intellectual equals.

Still I am in the dark, because you need to "feel it" in order to empathise. No empathy = no real understanding.

Like VK3AUU, I need someone to explain it to me first hand. Having enjoyed the 60's I was always a bit of a free-wheeler, but looking back, attraction always seemed to be between equals.

Good for you, Barbara.
I admire your unflinching honesty and courage enormously.
Keep speaking out, Royal Commission or not, you change things.

Boaz

While some are getting at the root cause, further injury to children needs to be prevented through the criminal justice system:

a) And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had
done unto him. And he said, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants
shall he be unto his brethren...."

b)...do justice to the afflicted and needy.

c) Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of
the wicked.

d) Leviticus 18

e) They that forsake the law praise the wicked: but such as keep
the law contend with them.;

f) When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth....

g) To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord
than sacrifice.

h) A king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away
all evil with his eyes.

i) A wise king scattereth the wicked, and bringeth the wheel over them.

j) He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even
they both are abomination to the Lord.

k) It is not good to accept the person of the wicked, to overthrow the righteous in judgment.

l) It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne
is established in righteousness.

m) A righteous man falling down before the wicked is as a troubled
fountain, and a corrupt spring.

A major purpose of government is to protect the people (including children) from criminal violence.

I'm sure you know, each act of child abuse destroys a child, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually for his or her entire life (it's not "just sex" as some catholic priests in transgression might argue).

Should we not listen to their silent cries for help? Isn't that the mandate of God? As God/Jesus said:

It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his
neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend
one of these little ones.

Why do people like HawaiiLawyer see religion as the solution to all these problems of child abuse. In the past 50 years or so the leaders of the churches seem to have been some of the main defenders of the perpertrators of abuse against children. As one example I would cire the succour given to the late Father Ridout by the then Archbishop, now Cardinal Pell. There are many others. This is not to single out the clergy as the only source of child abuse. Family members and relatives seem to come to the fore in many circumstances.

God's standards, the l0Cs are summarized in the two, first love your God with all your heart, soul, spirit, mind, and two, love your neighbor exactly as you love yourself.

Pattern all human actions based on commandment number two, informed by commandment number one, and there would be no child sexual abuse, because humans would in fact love these children as they do themselves. Right now, sans these standards, child sexual abusers do not love these children at all, but see these children as a resource to be used by the "self" (themselves), for their own selfish purposes. They care not that these children are destroyed. To them, as to some priests who commit child sexual abuse, this is "just sex" -- relieving themselves, which they think is the "highest" priority.

Notice that these priests do not follow commandment one, love your God with all that you are. If they did, if they loved and admired God with everything they were, including their minds, they would follow his standards, not theirs.

If you locked up all the men/boys who commit incest you would be putting away a sizeable proportion of the population. It is much more prevalent than anyone out there realizes and it starts from quite a young age in all sections of society.

Posted by VK3AUU, Friday, 24 November 2006 6:44:10 PM

Check SBS TV tonight:

11:20 'My Mother, My Abuser"

From the SMH TV Guide: "One quarter of all cases of sexual abuse of children are perpetrated by adult females. Two thirds of their victims are girls".

"This confronting documentary focuses on mothers who sexually abuse their sons and daughters. Statistics show that 22 per cent of cases of child abuse are perpetrated by women and only 35 per cent of the victims are boys. In this program, victims of maternal incest, both female and male, describe their ordeals in detail and recount the trauma they have suffered. Experts provide us with the shocking statistics and reveal that child abuse often happens within apparently respectable middle-class families"
Posted by Hamlet, Thursday, 30 November 2006 3:57:55 PM

VK3AUU I hope you are watching SBS tonite.