The discursive production of public inquiries: The case of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

2020 ◽  
pp. 174165902095345
Author(s):  
Matthew Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
News Media ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The State ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
The Right ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
The Church

Since the turn of the century, public inquiries into the perpetration and concealment of child sexual abuse within religious institutions have proliferated throughout Europe, North America and Australasia. This article examines the role that news media discourses might play in supporting this trend. Taking Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as a case study, I compare how news media constructed its precipitating issue of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church at two different points in time: the period surrounding the announcement of the Royal Commission and a period 10 years earlier when calls were made for a Royal Commission that were not actualised. I find that in the decade before the Royal Commission’s establishment news media deemed the Church capable of and responsible for delivering justice, and as such licensed it to respond to allegations of abuse internally. In the period surrounding the Royal Commission’s establishment, however, the Church was rendered complicit and had lost its authority to manage the issue internally, while the State had become marked as responsible for recourse instead. This suggests that the emergence of the Royal Commission was imbricated in broader discursive shifts regarding which institution was attributed the right and responsibility to respond. These findings both indicate that news media discourses may play a role in facilitating or inhibiting the emergence of public inquiries and also raise critical questions about the consequences of a discursive shift that centres the State as responsible for and capable of delivering justice in the aftermath of institutional child sexual abuse.

Exceptional Sexual Harms

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 734-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Gleeson
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
Distinct Sense ◽  
Church Personnel

Questioning of Catholic Church leaders in the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has revealed a distinct sense of immunity and lack of responsibility for the crimes of church personnel, which has resulted in stymied justice for complainants in sexual abuse lawsuits. In this article, I explore this immunity by examining it in the context of treatments of sexual harms in other areas of private law, particularly religious exceptions to discrimination law, by which religious organizations are granted immunity from the modern rationale of the harms of discrimination on the grounds of sex and sexual orientation. In situating child sexual abuse claims in the broader sphere of private law, I aim to reveal law’s incoherent logic of sexual harms, and its implications for justice. The example of religious exceptions illustrates an incoherent problematization of sexual harm and responsibility in contemporary legal and political systems that aim to uphold modern values of equality and dignity while sustaining incompatible doctrines of religious autonomy.

The spoken and unspoken nature of child abuse in the miniseries Devil’s Playground: The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the Catholic Church and television drama in Australia

2016 ◽  
Vol 159 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-93
Author(s):  
Terrie Waddell ◽  
Timothy W Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Green Light ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
Abusive Behaviour

In a departure from Fred Schepisi’s film The Devil’s Playground, the television sequel Devil’s Playground focuses on the cultural impact of priest child abuse. It will be argued that the prolific mainstream media coverage of these crimes before the series was made, and anticipated during its screening, lent a form of permission to green light the production. In focusing on Case 28 of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, this article will draw attention to the problematic nature of dramatising priest abuse in mainstream Australian television. While victims have willingly voiced graphic details of the sexual violence they experienced as children, after decades of silence, it is as if networks and producers are only now awkwardly grappling with these uncomfortable realities. In the process of sanitising such abusive behaviour, they reduce the degree of cruelty that survivors are intent on communicating.

Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 658-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. White ◽  
Karen J. Terry
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Excessive Force ◽  
Police Organization ◽  
Sex Abuse ◽  
Police Deviance ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The Catholic Church response to its sexual abuse crisis and how the problem should be addressed parallels the “rotten apple” assertions of police deviance. The rotten apple theory, however, does not fully explain police deviance, as there are often also structural explanations. This article employs Kappeler, Sluder, and Alpert's (1998) police deviance framework to characterize and understand the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, drawing specific comparisons to the intentional use of excessive force by police. Though the analogy has limitations, there are similarities at both the individual and organizational levels, particularly because the Church has implemented accountability mechanisms similar to the police. The article concludes with a discussion of lessons the Church can learn from the police organization as they seek to prevent, control, and effectively respond to sexual abuse of children by their clergy.

Media Hierarchies of Attention: News Values and Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Waller ◽  
Tanja Dreher ◽  
Kristy Hess ◽  
Kerry McCallum ◽  
Eli Skogerbø
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
News Values ◽  
Institutional Responses

scholarly journals Legal Irresponsibility and Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Crofts
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Catholic Education ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Sex Abuse ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
Child Sex Abuse

The current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has demonstrated serious long-term failures to prevent and adequately respond to child sexual abuse by institutions. Rather than regarding the law as a system of responsibility, this article argues that it can be read instead as organising irresponsibility, drawing upon Scott Veitch’s ideas in Law and Irresponsibility. His key argument is that legal institutions operate as much to deflect responsibility for harms suffered as to acknowledge them. This article focuses on the ways in which the criminal justice system is complicit in organising irresponsibility for systemic failures through an analysis of the Royal Commission Case Study No 6: The responses of a primary school and the Toowoomba Catholic Education Office to the Conduct of Gerald Byrnes. Through concrete examples, this article analyses the ways in which criminal law organises irresponsibility through the individuation of responsibility and the emphasis upon subjective culpability. These practices ensure irresponsibility for actors for systemic failures.

scholarly journals Bad Apples, Bad Barrel: Exploring Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse by Catholic Clergy in Australia

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jodi Death
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
Institutional Abuse ◽  
Cover Up

This paper considers constructions of institutional culture and power in the cover-up of child sexual abuse (CSA) by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church of Australia. The issue of cover-up has previously been considered in international inquiries as an institutional failing that has caused significant harm to victims of CSA by Catholic Clergy. Evidence given by select representatives of the Catholic Church in two government inquiries into institutional abuse carried out in Australia is considered here. This evidence suggests that, where cover-up has occurred, it has been reliant on the abuse of institutional power and resulted in direct emotional, psychological and spiritual harm to victims of abuse. Despite international recognition of cover-up as institutional abuse, evidence presented by Roman Catholic Representatives to the Victorian Inquiry denied there was an institutionalised cover-up. Responding to this evidence, this paper queries whether the primary foundation of cover-up conforms to the ‘bad apple theory’ in that it relates only to a few individuals, or the ‘bad barrel theory’ of institutional structure and culture.

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