Simply put, the most puzzling thing about the Australian 'Time for Action: The National Council's Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, 2009-2021' is that the plan doesn't address the physical, emotional or sexual abuse of children. In fact, the actual incidence of various types of child abuse, and the profiles of the individuals abusing them have been conspicuously omitted from the volumes of information that justify the National Council's plan.
Understandably, many Australian men have expressed outrage that such a high profile government study would use the possessive pronoun "their," regarding women, as though fathers did not exist in their children's lives. But perhaps the government's failure to include men as caretakers of their own children can be better explained with further investigation into The Plan. Let's take a look at some statistics and studies about child abuse and neglect in Australia as well as the conspicuous absence of some key information. This may help to gauge the severity of the problem, and to determine who is responsible.
The Exclusion of Child Abuse Statistics
While the architects of The Plan often mention how a life in an abusive home is detrimental to a child's well-being, they lack any actual analysis of child abuse and the perpetrators.
In 1996, two quite detailed reports discussing the problem of child abuse in Australia were published, including in-depth analysis of the data that examined the sex and relationship of the perpetrators. Both Angus G and Hall G (1996) [2] and Tomison A (1996) [3] research papers showed an alarming amount of varying types of child abuse, including physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect. Indeed, one of the more shocking pieces of information they supplied identified single parent mothers as the largest demographic of perpetrators of child abuse in Australia. Indeed, the Angus and Hall publication posted some very stunning data. The first chart shows family type of the victims for five Australian states:
(Source: Angus and Hall 1996)
Angus and Hall also studied the finalized cases of child abuse for five Australian states:
(Source: Angus and Hall 1996)
The Angus and Hall study also showed a graph of the types of abuse by perpetrator:
(Source: Angus and Hall 1996)
In 1997, the academic researchers Broadbent and Bentley published 'Child Abuse and Neglect Australia 1995-1996' for the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which confirmed what Angus and Hall as well as Tomison showed the year before. The report examined the national figures of child abuse for 1995-96, which showed 29,833 cases of substantiated child abuse or neglect in Australia. The split between the victims sexes, girls(51%) and boys(49%) under the age of 15 who were abused, was split almost evenly. [4-pg19]
(Source: Broadbent and Bentley 1997)
"The data that are available indicate that the person believed responsible in 71% of substantiated notifications of abuse and neglect was the natural parent. This is not surprising given that child abuse and neglect is a child protection issue and that the natural parent is the person most likely to have care of a child. Step-parents were reported as the person responsible in 10% of substantiated notifications and a parent’s de facto partner in 7%. Parents were believed to be responsible for 66% of physical abuse substantiations, 77% of emotional abuse substantiations, 87% of neglect substantiations, but only 24% of sexual abuse substantiations." [4-pg34]The researchers further examined the sex and relationship of the responsible parties in which this data was readily available.
"In 1995–96, of finalised investigations in those States and Territories for which data were available (Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory), 40% involved children living in single female parent families and 31% living in ‘two parent—natural’ families. A further 15% of finalised investigations involved children from ‘two parent—other’ families (such as families where there is one natural parent and a de facto or a step-parent)"[4-pg35]
(Source: Broadbent and Bentley 1997)
- 40% single parent female
- 46% two-parent families (both male and female parental perpetrators)
- 6% single parent male
- 8% Other
(Source: Broadbent and Bentley 1997)
However, in a recent email exchange with a spokesperson for AIWH's Child Welfare Division, the AIWH defends their reasoning why the Australian government no longer keeps information on the sex and relationship of the perpetrator.
"Data on ‘sex of person believed responsible’ were included in the annual child protection data collection up to 2001-02, but were not published due to ongoing issues with data availability/quality/comparability.It must be stated that the information that was released to the public after 1998 did not contain this information, but were only cited in internal papers which are available only upon request. Furthermore, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada have not had any such problems recording the sex and relationship of child abusers, and is part of each countries yearly statistical reporting. The reporting of this data in Australia up until 1996 shows fairly complete information on most of the Australian states and territories, which has left many confused or upset over this development.
These issues were mentioned in Child abuse and neglect 1995-96, but not in subsequent reports. Child abuse and neglect 1995-96 (p33) notes: Data were collected from each State and Territory on the relationship to the child and the sex of the person believed responsible for substantiated abuse and neglect. However, some States and Territories had a large number of unknown values in their data on these items and most either could not report on the sex of the person believed responsible, or could not do so reliably.
The decision to discontinue the collection of these data would have been approved by the state and territory government representatives on the former National Child Protection and Support Services data group, and was most likely the result of ongoing data quality issues.
Some of the underlying issues with identifying and recording information about ‘the person believed responsible’ are shown by the related data item: ‘person believed responsible, by relationship to the child’. These data were published up to 2001-02, but always with caveats around data comparability and availability."
In 2003, another researcher for the Australian Institute of Family Studies, Fitzroy 2003 ‘The violence of women: Making sense of child abuse perpetrated by mothers’, shed some further light on the statistics which continued to show mothers as the primary perpetrator of child abuse.
"Women commit between 31-50 percent of physical assaults on children. Mothers commit almost 50 percent of the recorded infanticide and women perpetrate between 2-7 percent of sexual assaults against children. It is worth noting that often researchers identify that, for example, 69 percent of perpetrators of such and such crime are men, but then fail to discuss who perpetrated the remaining 31 percent. Within family violence research often a gender-neutral term such as ‘parent’ or ‘care giver’ is used, however there is no further discussion as to whether it was a father or mother who perpetrated the assaults. This absence may reflect a general understanding that men are the majority of perpetrators of child assaults, however it may also reflect a denial of the assault of children by their mothers."[6-pg2]While Fitzroy criticizes the AIHW and ABS decision to not keep the data concerning the sex and relationship of child abusers, she gives a brief reasoning why she understands that many feel that women's violence can be explained away.
"This paper positions women’s use of violence within a social context that includes historical, structural and institutional violence characterised by patterns of domination and oppression. This social context includes patriarchal, racist and classist ideologies whereby some people are defined as superior to ‘others’.....I would argue therefore that an analysis of women’s violence should be positioned within an analysis of the human capacity for violence. We can all desire retribution for perceived harms, experience rage and the wish to inflict pain on another."[6-pg3]The National Director of the Joint Parenting Association, Yuri Joakimidis, not only admonishes the Australian government for its refusal to keep these records, he claims that bias within the AIHW, to further a particular ideology, were compromising the integrity of all of its data collection.
"In this context, the decision taken in 1997 by the AIHW (Broadbent and Bentley 1997) to no longer publish data indicating the sex of perpetrators in substantiated child abuse cases must be reversed. The action was taken just one year after the data was first published in 1996 (968 men and 1138 women). The omission was justified on the wobbly basis that only one state (WA) and two territories (ACT & NT) had furnished statistics and a lack of publishing space. Interested parties were advised that they could obtain the data under a Freedom Of Information request at a cost of $200.Indeed, looking at Western Australia's numbers for 2005-06 and 2007-08 alone, they continue to show the same pattern of perpetrators of child abuse being overwhelmingly single females.
Curiously, these reasons did not preclude the publication of these data in 1996. In fact, Angus and Hall (1996) observed that "the information base provide an extra dimension to data previously presented." Quite obviously, the non publication of these important statistics can negatively impact on child abuse policy and the allocation of resources. If the AIHW decision does indeed represent bias reporting then such slanted views clearly have no place in scientific endevours." [5]
I believe it is important to note the hypocrisy of calling this major report on domestic violence 'Time for Action: The National Council's Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children' when critical information concerning child abuse and neglect in Australia is missing, obfuscated or perhaps even concealed. Furthermore, there are compelling reasons to believe that the National Council left out key facts regarding women's violence to satisfy an ideological and financial agenda that hinges on a false paradigm in which only men are violent in the home.
By omitting this key data, it is clear that the National Council is attempting to paint men as the monsters of domestic violence, who are responsible for almost all of Australia's problems inside the home. The fact that women, not men, are responsible for the majority of actual child abuse was intentionally removed from the parameters of their studies. It is not only a disgrace to professional and academic integrity, it's a slap in the face to those forgotten children of Australia who live the brutal reality of violence and abuse, day in and day out.
Violence, a human problem, is one which both men and women perpetrate; we are all responsible for putting an end to it, not just in the home, but in society at large. For this council to deny the violence, neglect and other abuses that women commit could be seen as helping to condemn Australian children to lives of invisible pain. It is time the men and women of Australia let their voices be heard, and instruct their government that this is not an acceptable situation. Moreover, it is time that the members of the National Council Advisory Board be held accountable to the public they purport to serve. The women, the men and the children of Australia deserve better than this. They deserve the truth.
References:
[1] 'Time for Action: The National Council's Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, 2009-2021'
[2] Angus G & Hall G (1996). Child Abuse and Neglect Australia 1994-1995. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Series; no 16)
[3] Tomison A (1996). “Protecting Children: Updating The National Picture” in Child Abuse and Neglect Australia 1994-1995, Child Welfare Series No.16, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, AGPS, Canberra
[4] Broadbent A and Bentley R (1997). Child Abuse and Neglect Australia 1995-1996. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Catalogue No CWS 1. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (Child Welfare Series No 17)
[5] Discussion of AIHW Data
[6] Fitzroy 2003 - ‘The violence of women: Making sense of child abuse perpetrated by mothers’ Australian Institute of Family Studies
[7] Australian Bureau of Statistics
