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Keywords: Counselling

  • RELIGION

    Redress scheme's new class of have-nots

    • Cathy Kezelman
    • 08 April 2019
    8 Comments

    Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election, Australia must respond promptly and fairly to the needs of all survivors, not only of institutional child sexual abuse, but of all forms of childhood trauma. Every time we create a new class of survivor and more 'have nots' we replicate the inequities of abusive systems.

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  • RELIGION

    No shortcuts to reform after church abuse crisis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 April 2019
    75 Comments

    The sentencing of Pell highlighted the dismay and soul-searching among Catholics at sex abuse and its devastation of the lives of victims and their families. It also brought home the depth of the crisis caused by clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Although it still challenges understanding, a historical parallel may help illuminate it.

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  • RELIGION

    Australian Catholics take stock as Pell falls

    • John Warhurst
    • 06 March 2019
    61 Comments

    A conservative within a conservative church he was a divisive figure, not just because of his orthodox views but because of the unbending and assertive style with which he promulgated them. Something died in Australian Catholicism with this verdict and Australian Catholics will have to live with that whatever the future turns out to be.

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  • RELIGION

    A survivor's take on the Pell verdict

    • Victim #6, abuse survivor
    • 05 March 2019
    23 Comments

    Apparently there are committees deep within Church institutions that secretly work on tightening up, amending and making standards for their schools and churches to follow. I can guarantee there wouldn't be one abuse survivor on any of these committees.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Truth and justice after the Pell verdict

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 February 2019
    253 Comments

    Should the appeal fail, I hope and pray that Cardinal Pell, heading for prison, is not the unwitting victim of a wounded nation in search of a scapegoat. Should the appeal succeed, the Victoria Police should review the adequacy of the police investigation of these serious charges.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Affirmative consent is good for everyone

    • Tim Hutton
    • 31 August 2018
    7 Comments

    A classic argument of those opposed to active consent is that it paints all men as predators. On the contrary, active consent should actually provide greater peace of mind to men than the current mainstream approach. When in doubt, ask. If the response is not unambiguous and affirmative, then do not proceed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A Migrant and Refugee Week stocktake

    • Carolina Gottardo and Nishadh Rego
    • 20 August 2018
    13 Comments

    This remarkable policy of what Dr Eve Lester calls 'planned destitution' combines the most extreme instincts of neoliberal, nationalist and authoritarian thinking. Fundamentally, it derives from the Minister for Home Affairs' far reaching powers to determine the rights and entitlements of non-citizens such as people seeking asylum.

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  • MEDIA

    No media witch-hunt on Wilson

    • Suzanne Smith
    • 19 July 2018
    28 Comments

    In May 2018 Archbishop Wilson was convicted of concealing a serious indictable offence relating to the sexual abuse of a teenage boy by a priest in his diocese. Wilson is the highest ranking Catholic cleric to be convicted of such an offence. The Church's response to this episode should be of particular interest.

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  • RELIGION

    So-called 'witch-hunt' holds Wilson to account

    • Peter Gogarty
    • 19 July 2018
    24 Comments

    I am a survivor of sexual abuse. It was me who first made a complaint to NSW police that Wilson knew what Fletcher had been up to, who wrote an opinion piece for Fairfax asking what Wilson knew, who appeared on ABC TV naming the Archbishop. By extension, it must be me who initiated the witch-hunt and stirred up public hysteria.

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  • RELIGION

    Breaking the seal for the common good

    • Peter Johnstone
    • 18 July 2018
    46 Comments

    The arguments for exemption ignore or deny the harm to children that can arise from failure to report. They claim the law would be ineffective because few paedophiles go to confession, and might not confess if the seal did not apply. Such conjectural arguments ignore the basic principle that all harm to a child must be forestalled.

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  • MEDIA

    Archbishop Wilson: Fair cop or foul?

    • Alan Atkinson
    • 13 July 2018
    51 Comments

    I have interviewed Wilson just once, while working for the ABC in Adelaide. I am not a Catholic. I abhor sexual abuse and its concealment. I do not wish to debate the rights or wrongs of resignation but simply reflect on whether the pursuit of Wilson could be described as a witch-hunt and whether he might be a scapegoat for the sins of many.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Must we remain so exceptionally cruel?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 24 May 2018
    3 Comments

    These are people living precariously: pregnant women, families with young children, elderly people. They are being 'transitioned out' of Status Resolution Support Services based on 'job-readiness'. The move not only illustrates the arbitrary nature of immigration policy, which sets people up to fail; it is institutionalised sadism.

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