One reason child sexual abuse is not dealt with is because adults still insist on indulging a 'little' with the pornography (pervert) industry. The fruit of many feeding on this perversion is child abuse although denied by its supporters. Most of their EROS founded studies find no link between porn and child abuse (drrrr!) The problem is increasing and the denial is getting louder. The 'despised' school chaplains are discovering how huge the problem is but no one really wants to know. DCD are often more interested in charging a father for giving a kid a smack for rebellion than they are in getting involved in messy family situations. Child sexual abuse will continue more and more as the traditional family unit is broken down and pornography continues to pervert peoples minds into believing that life is simply about having sex whenever and with whomever one wishes. You would be very hard pressed to fined a child molester in prison (whether catholic priest or doctor) who wasn't into porn.

I have three special needs children with little or no help from Govt agencies regarding abuse by father, Children cannot disclose enough detail to get a conviction. Bruises, are not enough, disclosure of the perp still not enough. Family Court keeps returning children to their father for contact. The psychological damage to the children, and mother is shocking.

As a child, my mother routinely made the threat "you wait till your father gets home" if I strayed outside the bounds of what she considered acceptable behaviour. That could include anything from "backchatting" to strewing flour around the kitchen whilst experimenting with making pancakes or a thousand other childhood indiscretions. The threat would be followed up by my Dad when he got home with a "belting" or a good whack with a rolled-up newspaper, both of which often left bruises or welts. My Mum rarely hit me herself.

Who was the "abuser"? Was it Mum, or Dad, or both, or neither? Certinly from my own point of view the worst part was waiting the hours after the threat was made until Dad got home, while the actual "belting" was often less painful than the anticipated one. I suspect many children shared my experience.

I also have some experience with the effect of false allegations raised as part of a custody matter. I was prevented from seeing my children for 7 months because their mother claimed I shouted at her and obtained an interim DVO on that basis. With no further claim made, she then managed to get a magistrate to join the children to the interim DVO because, as he said "I can't take the chance that the allegations may be proven". Apparently he hadn't bothered to read the claim made in her statement - the fact that she had made a claim of any kind was sufficient for that bureaucrat to act in self-protection and prevent my kids from seeing their father.

The Family Court was sensible enough to read the claims and put them in their proper context. I now have 50% care of my children and they are as happy and as well-adjusted as any two kids I know. Their mother has had them off to "counselling" and all sorts of evaluations, all of which confirm my view.

The point is that the mere making of an allegation doesn't make the allegation true. That fact must be recognised by the Law.

Runner,

I think the child abuser uses porn as a result of their unhealthy interest in children, not the other way round.

I don't like pornography, but do not want to see it banned. As long as it is legal, the porn industry can be controlled. Remove these controls, and there may be more child porn on the black market.

My views on porn are, no matter how much of it you obtain, it can never be truly satisfying. Porn can be addictive, because it does not satisfy, there is the need to obtain more of it, and some people can't stop with just the porn. While porn can drive some people to commit sexual crime, it may prevent others from doing the same thing.

The author said the folowing, Quote

"The public, understandably, want to know why. What is Child Protection doing? The Howard government acted to intervene in the lives of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory but they failed to call white families who abused their children to account. Is this meant to infer that white people do not abuse children? Or is the abuse simply to be treated as acceptable? Do white people have rights over their children that Aboriginal people are not entitled to?"

This is a silly interpretation, as it could equally be said that the then Government gave a higher priority to the welfare of aboriginal children than children of other Australians. A cynic could say why are they spending so much on NT aboriginal kids and not on others or those in other states.

The truth would be that the report showed there was a real need to take action. The report was solely on the NT and the States have their own responsiblity.

I note that yesterday the now Minister confirmed that the intervention would keep going for at least another 12 months and that the aboriginal mothers strongly requested her to keep the restrictions on welfare payments. So much for all the accusations earlier that the intervention was purely political.

One can only hope that it will be the kids that benefit and some of the offenders are brought to book.

Whether aboriginal or not, child abuse is definately not acceptable.

The title says "Why is child abuse an accepted norm in Australia?"

The thing is that child abuse is NOT an acceptable norm in Australia.

We have laws about child abuse, people report suspected child abuse.

So how can child abuse be an accepted norm when there are laws designed to prevent it and to protect children from abuse.

We laws that regulate the road traffic and most or the majority of poeple abide by the road rules. simply because a small number of people may break the rules does not mean that breaking the laws is a NORM.