Dear Antiseptic,

You are quite the drama queen.

It's only appropriate to refer to someone as paranoid when their fears and hypervigilance are unfounded.

It would be more fitting for you to carry that sort of label; since you are so fearful that there is a feminist conspiracy (unfounded) that might rob you of some perceived 'entitlement' that you are quite at ease with the idea that rape and abuse should continue unchallenged.

There is no need for a totalitarian state. The laws and protocols to guide people in their professional behaviour already exist; all that is required is that people do their jobs and do them in an ethical manner, and that we EXPECT them to do so. Attitudes such as yours are what make it possible for abuses to continue.... and it isn't a miniscule number of children that suffer.

"..between 12.6% and 35.5% of women; and between 5.3% and 15.4% of men reported experiences when aged 16 or older which meet the legal definition of rape... "

http://www.yarrowplace.sa.gov.au/booklet_statistics.html

<"The highest rate of sexual assault was recorded for females 10-14 years of age at 544 per 100,000 females in that age group.
For males, rates were also highest for those aged 10-14 (95 per 100,000 relevant persons) and less than 10 (78 per 100,000 relevant persons).
Boys made up 32% of sexual assault victims aged less than 10 years. ">

http://www.aic.gov.au/topics/violence/sexual_assault/stats/victims.html

Do you understand that about 1 in 100 people experience a psychotic illness (like schizophrenia) at some time in their life. Do you realize that just for the age group of children 10-14 alone, the number of children victimized approximates 1/2 the total of people who experience schizophrenia - surely you wouldn't suggest that go untreated. .... but tonight, hundreds of children will be going to bed fearful of what the night might bring in terms of some creep's predilection for children.

As a community we can do better to protect youngsters. Getting rid of rape supportive attitudes that favour perpetrators and punish their targets is one way to help.

Pynchme:"The laws and protocols to guide people in their professional behaviour already exist; all that is required is that people do their jobs and do them in an ethical manner, and that we EXPECT them to do so."

You can't have it both ways. Either there's a systemic problem or there isn't. In only your last post you argued there is, now it seems some of the reflected light of pure reason in illuminating your thoughts. I knew you weren't entirely stupid.

BTW, if people like you weren't so keen to see abuse in every corner, your arguments would have more credibility. As it stands, all you do is show time and again that your view is at odds with reality.

BTW, what does schizophrenia have to do with the Principal drugging and raping a student? Are you suggesting he was schizophrenic?

Now off you go and make sure the doors and windows are all locked. You can't be too careful...

Antiseptic: I apologize for assuming that you would know what is meant by the term "systemic problem". Systems theory, especially in sociology and psychology, refers to the total of interacting forces - formal (like structures, organizations or groups big or small; procedures and laws) as well as cultural (like beliefs, knowledge and attitudes) and behaviour of all the individuals within the system (whether the system is a family or a workplace or a whole society).

System theory holds that change in one aspect of the system impacts on all the other parts of the system; changing to some degree the patterns of functioning. Therefore, individual beliefs, attitudes and actions, contribute to the system functioning and individual attitudes and behaviours matter in the bigger picture.

When something unwanted happens repeatedly (like the Principal assaulting students) and nothing changes to prevent a reocurrance; we have a systemic problem. In this case I am arguing that the behaviours of others enable/d the unwanted event to repeat; and nothing yet has been done to prevent further enabling. If anything, the only one who tried to do the right thing (for the greater good, if I may put it that way) has been punished; probably deterring others from working to make sure that the system works in the way most beneficial to youth and their safety.

Antiseptic:

The reference to schizophrenia was to help you grasp the point that sexual assault, especially of children, is not a rare occurrence.

Just in the age group of 10-14 boys and girls alone, the number of children victimized approximates 1/2 the total of people who experience schizophrenia. We allocate quite a lot of resources to mental health care (as we need to and should) yet we're still in the dark ages with people like yourself insisting that sexual assault is a rare event.

<"The highest rate of sexual assault was recorded for females 10-14 years of age at 544 per 100,000 females in that age group.
For males, rates were also highest for those aged 10-14 (95 per 100,000 relevant persons) and less than 10 (78 per 100,000 relevant persons).
Boys made up 32% of sexual assault victims aged less than 10 years. ">

http://www.aic.gov.au/topics/violence/sexual_assault/stats/victims.html

pynchme:"something unwanted happens repeatedly (like the Principal assaulting students) and nothing changes to prevent a reocurrance"

Except something did change - the Principal tried to stretch his good fortune in exploiting the credulity of others and got caught out. The system worked, by your own definition.

pynchme:"In this case I am arguing that the behaviours of others enable/d the unwanted event to repeat; and nothing yet has been done to prevent further enabling."

So, on the one hand you argue it was systemic, while on the other you say it was a concatenation of poor decisions made by others. As I have said several times, the only way to prevent such poor decisions is to remove any form on decision-making power, leaving automatons operating in an authoritarian environment. Is that what you want to see? If not, what should change?

pynchme:"people like yourself insisting that sexual assault is a rare event."

Actually, I said that sexual assault of a student by a Principal was a rare event. In fact, in the year in question, AFAIK there was only one such case in the entire nation. I suspect that if we extended the time-frame to 10 years the statistics wouldn't look any more impressive.

By all means advocate for genuine victims and even self-declared victims of sexual assault if you feel driven that way, but try not to generalise from extremes or focus on the extreme examples. To do so is not merely poor logic, it leads to poor outcomes, including misallocation of resources.

The event of children being molested by teachers is not as rare as one would hope; but there is an additional reason why Departments of Education have specific guidelines about such matters, and that is that most sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by someone close to them - usually a family member or family friend or someone they know and trust (like teacher). If they confide while at school, there are guidelines in place about what the response should be.

The response doesn't include your idea that kids lie anyway and often muck up in school etc. In fact, perpetrators, in the grooming process, often cast children and youth as unreliable witnesses and as troublemakers just so that they have no credibility with anyone they talk to about the abuse. There is research that identifies that pattern.

Just as your first response accorded with that view; the thing that needs to change isn't rules and regulations, but attitudes that help perpetrators to continue their activities.

If a child/youth says that abuse is happening to them or someone else, it should be reported for investigation - usually by a JIRT team. The first step is listening seriously; the second is reporting it and ensuring that the matter is properly investigated.

The system has not worked when the people who sacked the only teacher who acted properly remain in their jobs while she remains unemployed. The system is not working when the students who challenged the Principal about his behaviour remain excluded and cast as problematic.

How do you think that the stream of child abuse; one perpetrator after another, managed to continue for years at St Stanislaus Catholic College at Bathurst between 1960 and 1993. Or there is the Knox school stream of abusers that molested children from the 1960s until 1990 or so: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/29/2556166.htm

Some molesters are known to impose themselves on 100 victims.

The social, cultural and attitudinal conditions that automatically discount claims of abuse and actively enable abuse to occur and continue, is what needs to change. Individual attitudes matter.