1838 saw the publication of Charles Dickens' tale of institutionalised child abuse, Oliver Twist. Dickens' work is still used to aid understanding of the trauma arising from poverty, and the suffering of children at the hands of individuals and within institutional settings.
I suspect that in broader Australian society we assume that Dickensian attitudes to children have evolved. Certainly, each Australian state and territory has a system of government-based child protection. Further, in 1990 the Commonwealth government ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Australian Human Rights Commission is responsible for protecting and promoting children's rights under the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 (Cth).
Aligned with the sentiments behind child protection, society's image of children and childhood is idyllic. We seek to create a safe haven for our children, protecting them from both real and imagined dangers. We hover over them as infants, at school, and even once they are adults at university.
Yet beneath this veneer of conspicuous concern for child welfare — and I do think that it is a veneer only — lies a substratum of deeply ambivalent, even malevolent, attitudes towards children with a distinctly Dickensian flavour.
Recent decades have seen a series of royal commissions and inquiries into the abuse of children in various contexts, notably Bringing Them Home: The Stolen Children Report (1997), the Forde Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions (1999), Lost Innocents: Righting the Record Senate Inquiry into British Child Migrants (2001), Little Children are Sacred Inquiry into Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse (2007), and the inquiry into Institutional Responses to Sex Abuse.
Of note, many of these inquiries cover ground that has already been the subject of various other inquiries. Few, if any, of these institutionalised abuses come as a surprise.
In the recent weeks, on top of harrowing evidence from those abused by an organised child sex ring within the Anglican Church, media have reported apparent torture in the notorious Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in the Northern Territory, abuse of youth in Queensland detention centres, violence and sexual assault of children forcibly detained on Nauru by the Australian government, and an 'autism cage' in a Canberra school.
As a society, we worry about kids walking home from school or climbing trees, how much screen time we should allow children to promote maximum educational development, or how much stress school children experience in the NAPLAN tests.
"Smacking normalises adults' intrusion into children's bodily integrity, representing a foundation for the disrespect of children in multiple contexts and ultimately the abuse that we continue see in this country. "
At the same time, the state employs people — whether directly or indirectly — who decide that it is a good idea to cage a child, or to throw rocks at a five-year-old. In the case of the Northern Territory, the state decided to legislate in favour of the use of restraint chairs and spit hoods in youth detention and the Commissioner declared he 'didn't care how much chemical [tear gas] [was] used' on youth following alleged 'pandemonium'. In Queensland, authorities ignore repeated allegations of abuse.
While the wrongdoing of individuals is always of concern, all of these examples of violence against children point to institutionalised disregard for child welfare. Further, they are sufficiently widespread to evidence how society more broadly thinks children should be treated. That is why inquiries may be necessary, but they are not sufficient to deal with the root causes of violence towards children — the embedded attitudes that give permission to those in authority to capitalise on the misery of the powerless through abuse and even torture, and then to make excuses for it.
In the aftermath of these events, we hear that spit hoods and restraint chairs are for the safety of detention centre staff; that asylum seekers detained on Nauru frequently make up allegations; and that there is not enough money in the school system to deal with disruptive students. Each of these responses abnegates responsibility for a decision to abuse a child. So long as the system permits — and even sanctions — such abuses, any one individual will never be responsible for harm. And so the system continues.
The change that is needed, in addition to adducing the facts and the context of each abuse, is to elevate human rights: in particular, elevating the human rights of children. If we truly believe that children are the future, it behoves us — all of us — to treat all children with respect. This starts in the home, and faced with the ongoing cycle of institutional child abuse and torture perpetrated in this country, it is probably time to consider banning smacking. Smacking normalises adults' intrusion into children's bodily integrity, representing a foundation for the disrespect of children in multiple contexts and ultimately the abuse that we continue see in this country.
It is imperative that Australian governments stop the abuse occurring in its name — in our name — and somehow remedy the harms that we have caused countless numbers of children through policies of cruelty and denial of their human rights. In the meantime we must overcome the dissonance between the idyll of childhood and our embedded apathy towards children's rights. We must proclaim children's identity as self-contained humans deserving of dignity and respect.
'For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him. — Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Kate Galloway is a legal academic with an interest in social justice.