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The Otago Daily Times
May 29, 2002
Demonising any class of people is wrong
by Lynley Hood
Demonising any class of people as
devoid of humanity and beyond redemption is wrong, writes Dunedin author LYNLEY HOOD. There are
dangers in the parallels between the Christchurch
Civic Creche case and the recent conviction of Raymond White that we ignore
at our peril.
The willingness of some our more righteous citizens to make a scapegoat of
Raymond White calls to mind a question that exercised me throughout my
seven-year study of the Christchurch Civic Creche case: when a spark of
outrage is tossed into an already-anxious community, how do you stop it setting
off a firestorm?
However you look at it, the civic creche case was a disaster. It began with
the ambiguous comment of a 3-year-old boy, and ended with a bitterly divided
city, scores of families thrown into turmoil, 12 child care workers stripped
of their jobs and their previously unblemished reputations, four workers
arrested and discharged, and one (Peter Ellis) convicted and sentenced to 10
years in jail. Whether Ellis was guilty or innocent, that was too high a
price to pay.
There are lessons to be learnt from the creche case that we ignore at our
peril. These relate to the harm being inflicted on our society by current
campaigns to protect children from vaguely defined sexual dangers by
criminalising and scapegoating a wide range of people and behaviours. Such
campaigns ignore the realities of childhood and adolescent sexuality. They
distract us from serious problems related to the health, education and
welfare of children. They erode essential freedoms for everybody.
But the hysteria surrounding the issue is so pervasive that anyone who
suggests more thoughtful discussion risks being branded a child abuser.
To truly protect children, and to empower them to be themselves, we must
insist on a more sensible and compassionate approach. In particular, we need
to consider the following points:
Recent child sex abuse campaigns make
little or no distinction among diverse behaviours and circumstances. Any sex
equals violence. Anyone under the age of 17 is a "child". The
brutal sexual violation of a 5-year-old and an affair between a 15-year-old
girl and an 18-year-old boy are clearly very different cases, yet both are
portrayed as rape by law and in the media.
Demonising any class of people as devoid of
humanity and beyond redemption is wrong. Currently any transgressor of
under-age sex rules is branded a "sexual predator", even when no
violence or force is alleged, and even when the young person is a month or a
day shy of the legal age of consent. In addition, society's fears and hatred
of homosexuality often leads to a scapegoating of gay people, falsely
stereotyping them as child molesters.
Demonisation is destructive even when applied to violent offenders. Those who
commit truly violent crimes do not come out of a vacuum. They come out of our
communities and families. To view dangerous offenders as totally
"other" than us prevents us getting to the roots of such crimes.
Permanent stigmatisation not only prevents rehabilitation, it signals the
breakdown of civil society.
The battle cry "protect the
children" has been used to dramatically expand coercive state power.
Currently, ACC-funded therapists use counselling techniques that are known to
encourage false memories of sexual abuse; CYFS interviewers use investigative
techniques that cannot distinguish between true and false allegations;
prosecutors use quackery masked as "expert psychological evidence"
to encourage juries to convict on unreliable evidence. Despite repeated calls
from legal authorities and the public to address these problems, the
Government has refused to do so.
The power and capriciousness of the laws
and attitudes wrought by these campaigns have put up a destructive barrier
between adults and children. Currently, caring adults may reasonably fear
than any affection will be branded as abuse. This fear means that adults -
whether parents, teachers or strangers - often withhold that which all
children need most: affection, respect and attention.
Many of these concerns have surfaced in the debate surrounding the Raymond
White case. In so far as they affect the relationships between all adults and
all children, they affect us all. None the less, it is all too easy for those
of us who do not know or care about White to remain silent at this time.
Like Peter Ellis, Raymond White is an easy target. From the safety of our
comfort zones, it is easy to persuade ourselves (with appropriate expressions
of regret) that if the price of peace in our city is that we must allow our
fellow citizens to pillory a single man with a tarnished reputation, then so
be it. But the history of the Christchurch Civic Creche case shows that
sacrificing even one individual to the outraged minority would be a terrible
mistake, because a vengeful few with the smell of human sacrifice in their nostrils
can become a mob out of control.
Regardless of what we think of Raymond White, if we want to live in community
that values compassion over cruelty, tolerance over prejudice, forgiveness
over vengeance, love over hatred; and if we want to dowse the flames of panic
before they explode into a conflagration that consumes our city - then our
message to the small-minded bigots who seek to pillory Raymond White must be:
call off the lynch mob.
Lynley
Hood, of Dunedin,
is the author of A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case and Minnie Dean - Her Life and Crimes .
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