Category: Australia

‘Everyone was groomed’: Anne Manne’s story of Newcastle’s paedophile priest network centres on a ‘kidnapped’ childhood

In 2017, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that within the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, priests had perpetuated crimes of abuse for at least 30 years. Serious allegations were mismanaged, misplaced or ignored. Crimes were minimised. “Abusive and predatory” behaviour was wrongly portrayed as “consensual”.

In her new book, Crimes of the Cross, journalist Anne Manne provides an intricate and compelling account of how multiple diocesan clergy and leaders covered up allegations, protected priests who were known perpetrators and failed to care for survivors.

Manne builds on the groundbreaking work of Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy, whose investigations, starting in 2006, led to the establishment of the 2012 royal commission. Manne’s writing is informed by a variety of source materials, including interviews with McCarthy and various survivors, and evidence from the royal commission.

At least six priests associated with the diocese and one lay reader have been convicted of child sex offending. Other priests were identified as “prolific” abusers, but not convicted in their lifetime.

At the centre of the story, Manne states, there is “the denial of what ‘ostensibly good men’ do”.

A pivotal chapter, titled “The Wolf Hiding in Plain Sight”, uncovers the criminal activities of one of these “ostensibly good” men.

In late 2009, Manne tells us, Lawrence – by now the dean of the cathedral – was reported for sexual misconduct with an underage boy (in the early 1980s) to Michael Elliot, an ex-policeman who had been hired by the diocese to deal with sexual abuse complaints.

Lawrence, a powerful, controlling figure, had shaped diocesan culture and “groomed a whole city” for decades.

In the balance of power, everything was in the favour of powerful men like Lawrence and Parker. Children, who had nothing, were silenced, ignored and shamed.

Source: ‘Everyone was groomed’: Anne Manne’s story of Newcastle’s paedophile priest network centres on a ‘kidnapped’ childhood

Violence erupts, activists pepper sprayed at Melb protest

Violent scenes have broken out at a women’s rights rally in Melbourne’s CBD, as pro-transgender counter protestors clashed with frontline police and other activists.

Pro-transgender activists had turned up to counter a #WomenWillSpeak rally, held by the Women’s Action Group.
But scenes turned ugly when pro-trans supporters attempted to push through a police line, which resulted in officers tackling at least two protestors on the ground before deploying pepper spray.
A Herald Sun photographer was injured after he was pushed to the ground and pepper sprayed during the scuffle. Other media were shoved by members of Victoria Police.
Tony Gough, who was photographing the rally, sustained cuts to his face and legs and had his jeans ripped in the incident.
Women’s Action Group co-founder Michelle Uriarau, who was speaking at the #WomenWillSpeak rally, said the action was designed to highlight their concerns about women’s rights and gender-transitioning medicine.
Ms Uriarau claimed members of her movement had received death and rape threats.
“Wherever we speak publicly, there is always an attempt to silence us,” she said.

Source: Violence erupts, activists pepper sprayed at Melb protest

Affordable housing for trans women to be built in Darlinghurst

Sydney’s first dedicated affordable housing project for transgender women is set to be built in Darlinghurst, in Sydney’s inner-city.

“I am proud the City of Sydney is helping to provide affordable housing to trans women, as part of a sale of surplus residential property,” Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore wrote on Instagram. “Trans women are some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and often face rejection and isolation from their families of origin and the broader community.”

In May of last year, NSW Premier Chris Minns tasked government agencies with identifying surplus land and selling them to organisations working to provide housing for those in need. This excess land scheme was part of his attempt at improving housing supply in the state.

Homelessness for all women, particularly older women, in New South Wales is a massive issue. Last year’s census delivered shocking statistics showing a 48 per cover rise in homelessness for women, with a massive 78 per cent rise for women aged 65 to 74.

Domestic and family violence is one of the main drivers of homelessness, with the latest data from Homelessness NSW showing that, in 2020 and 2021, only 3 per cent of women fleeing violence received the long term housing they needed.

Homelessness NSW Trina Jones has told Women’s Agenda that the state “is the second lowest funded service system in the country and has the second highest rate of homelessness.”

This is “because they physically do not have enough people and resources to help the volume of people who need support,” she said.

Source: Affordable housing for trans women to be built in Darlinghurst

Six months of paid parental leave approved by Senate

The government’s expansion of paid parental leave to 26 weeks has passed the Senate today and will become law.

It means from 1 July this year, more than 180,000 families will benefit from an extra two weeks of leave (22 weeks in total). This number will then increase to 24 weeks from July 2025 and 26 weeks from July 2026.

The changes are designed to encourage families with two parents to share the care, with four weeks reserved for each parent.

With the changes to paid parental leave now approved, the next step for the government is to legislate its recent announcement that it will pay superannuation payments to those using the government-funded paid parental leave scheme.

Source: Six months of paid parental leave approved by Senate

Artist behind Mona’s ladies-only lounge ‘absolutely delighted’ man is suing for gender discrimination | Mona | The Guardian

The creator of an art installation that has become the subject of a formal anti-discrimination complaint says she is “absolutely delighted” that the case has ended up in Tasmania’s civil and administrative tribunal.

Kirsha Kaechele’s installation Ladies Lounge opened in Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in 2020, and sees women who enter the space being pampered by male butlers and served champagne while being surrounded by some of the museum’s finest pieces of art. Those who do not identify as women are not permitted entry.

On Tuesday, the performance piece expanded beyond the subterranean halls of the museum on Tasmania’s Berriedale Peninsula, with New South Wales man Jason Lau seeking justice in the tribunal over the museum’s alleged discrimination against some visitors.

Kaechele, whose husband David Walsh owns Mona, said she was an “artist who works in the world and I tend to engage life as a medium”.

The opportunity to extend the performance aspect of Ladies Lounge was embraced by the artist and 25 female supporters, who entered Tuesday’s tribunal hearing wearing a uniform of navy business attire. Throughout the day’s proceedings, they engaged in discreet synchronised choreographed movements, including leg crossing, leaning forward together and peering over the top of their spectacles. Apart from the gentle swish of 25 pairs of nylon clad legs crossing in unison, the support party remained silent. When the proceedings concluded, the troupe exited the tribunal to the Robert Palmer song Simply Irresistible.

During her defence, Kaechele ran through a timeline of Australian women’s lived experience of discrimination and exclusion, including being barred from working in the public service sector once married, and receiving lower pay than men for the same work – something Mona’s own management had engaged in up until 10 years ago, the artist pointed out in her evidence.

Lau argued that denying men access to some of the museum’s most important works (there is a Sidney Nolan, a Pablo Picasso and a trove of antiquities from Mesopotamia, Central America and Africa in the women-only space) is discriminatory. Kaechele said that was the point.

“The men are experiencing Ladies Lounge, their experience of rejection is the artwork,” she said.

An experience in a pub on Flinders Island several years ago, when Kaechele and a girlfriend were advised by male patrons that they would feel “more comfortable” retiring to the ladies lounge, inspired the work.

Kaechele admits the museum has amassed a “large file” of complaints over Ladies Lounge. But apart from the current case, only one other complainant has sought formal redress.

Mona’s lawyer Catherine Scott told Guardian Australia the case was an unusual one because the artwork was both a physical entity – a lounge – and a piece of performance art.

“There is the participatory element of allowing women and denying men,” she says.

Mona’s legal team will be relying on the tribunal’s interpretation of section 26 of Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act, under which a person is permitted to discriminate against another person in a situation designed to promote equal opportunity for a group of people who are disadvantaged or have a special need because of a prescribed attribute – in this case gender.

The tribunal is expected to hand down its decision within a month.

Source: Artist behind Mona’s ladies-only lounge ‘absolutely delighted’ man is suing for gender discrimination | Mona | The Guardian

Memory holes and insider policy on conversion law and gender transition

The human rights commission in Australia’s state of Victoria has quietly disappeared its public claim that a parent refusing to support a child’s request for puberty blocker drugs is breaking the law.

Until recently, the website of the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission stated that such a refusal would be illegal under the state’s draconian Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021.

Asked about the unannounced removal of the claim, the commission’s spokesman said it was done as part of a review of website material about how the 2021 Act applied to parents and children.

The list of “illegal practices” still includes other examples involving parents and children. The spokesman did not answer GCN’s question whether the commission stood by its claim about the legal peril of parental opposition to puberty blockers.

Yesterday in Australia’s most populous state of New South Wales (NSW), a proposal to hold a public inquiry into a draft law to ban “conversion therapy” was defeated.

Parliament’s Selection of Bills committee had recommended that the Conversion Practices Ban Bill 2024 be referred for an inquiry, but this was voted down 21-20 by members of the ruling Labor Party, the Greens and the Legalise Cannabis Party.

In parliament on March 13, Attorney-General Michael Daley sought to justify the lack of open public consultation by arguing that the “targeted, confidential” soundings taken by the government enabled “frank discussion and contributions from stakeholders.”

Source: Memory holes and insider policy on conversion law and gender transition

Victims of crime should be provided with legal representation, Victorian inquiry finds | Victoria | The Guardian

Most sexual assault survivors and other victims feel ‘silenced and sidelined’ by the justice system, landmark report says.

“When victims report a crime, they expect to play a part in the justice process but in reality, most felt they were silenced and sidelined,” said the commissioner, Fiona McCormack.

Once their case reached the court, almost 75% of the victims surveyed by the VOCC expressed concerns for their safety, mostly due to fear of having to interact with their perpetrator or their families.

One parent told the inquiry she had to sit beside her son’s alleged killer in a court foyer “because there were no separate spaces for victims and their families”.

The inquiry said sexual assault victims faced “some of the most invasive and traumatic aspects of our adversarial trial process”, including cross-examination, applications to access their phone or medical records, and to introduce their sexual history into evidence.

McCormack recommended sexual assault victims be provided with state-funded legal representation during some proceedings, to play a “protective role” for the victim that prosecutors don’t.

Source: Victims of crime should be provided with legal representation, Victorian inquiry finds | Victoria | The Guardian

WA First Nations child removal complaint filed in H… | NIT

Western Australia has become the second state to be subject to an Australian Human Rights Commission complaint for the discriminatory removal of First Nations children from their families.

n one case, Lisa* was allegedly removed from her family by Communities at age seven and taken 600 km from her home. She was placed in ten different foster homes, suffering sexual and physical abuse, all of which was allegedly reported to Communities who did not follow up the complaints.

In another case, Heather*, had her children removed by Communities, despite suffering abuse at the hands of her partner and father of her kids. They were placed with a non-Indigenous family, allegedly disconnected from their family, culture and community. When she became pregnant again, Communities removed her child shortly after birth.

Both women continue to suffer from long-term trauma and depression as a result of these actions.

The complaint is the second filed by Shine Lawyers to the AHRC concerning a child protection department unlawfully removing Indigenous children, which may lead to a class action for concerned families.

The first complaint was lodged against the NSW Department of Communities and Justice in January.

Class actions special counsel, Caitlin Wilson, said Indigenous families across the country had been “torn apart in this modern-day Stolen Generation”.

“We hope that each claim in each State will set us on the path to file class actions for these marginalised families who will never know a life without the weight of this trauma.”

Source: WA First Nations child removal complaint filed in H… | NIT

High Court battle set to begin over liability of Catholic Church for 1971 child sexual abuse in regional Victoria – ABC News

The offences happened in the boy’s home at Port Fairy soon after he had started school.

Father Bryan Coffey is accused of molesting the boy on two occasions during family social gatherings when the assistant priest was visiting.

Father Coffey was later convicted in the Ballarat County Court in February 1999 of multiple counts of sexual abuse against other children, and was given a three-year suspended sentence.

He died in 2013.

In 2021, 50 years after the events, the victim took his case to the Victorian Supreme Court and won, with the court finding the Diocese was vicariously liable for the damage caused by the assistant priest.

The man was awarded more than $200,000 in damages.

The church appealed against the finding that it was vicariously liable, but lost, prompting the High Court challenge today.

It was accepted in the lower courts that the abuse had happened on the balance of probabilities.

But the church says it is only vicariously liable if there was an employee-employer relationship.

Source: High Court battle set to begin over liability of Catholic Church for 1971 child sexual abuse in regional Victoria – ABC News

Dozens of children strip-searched by police over summer | SMH

NSW police strip-searched more than two dozen children, including a 12-year-old, in the four months to mid-February, despite a Minns government promise to review the controversial practice.

A freedom-of-information request filed by the Herald suggested that NSW Police continued strip-searching children at the same rate as before the government review was announced.

Strip-searching children, in which police direct children to remove their clothes and sometimes to lift their genitals, usually without a parent or guardian present, has been criticised by health experts for causing serious long-term trauma and harm to children’s development.

Redfern Legal Centre senior solicitor Samantha Lee said there should be a pause on all strip-searches of children while the review was ongoing.

Lee said that when she met clients who had been strip-searched as children, there was a deep level of shame and trauma that was similar to speaking to a survivor of sexual assault. Often the child never told their parents about it.

Greens justice spokeswoman Sue Higginson said strip-searching children was a policing method that did not work, given that most of the time nothing was found.

“We know that [strip-]searching is a terribly degrading exercise and a genuine violation of somebody’s dignity, and the reality is the threshold for a police officer to have the power to do that is very, very low,” Higginson said.

The FOI figures suggest police are disproportionately searching Aboriginal children. In the October-February timeframe, seven of the 26 children were Aboriginal. The 2021 census shows only one in 16 children in NSW is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

Source: 12ft