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Otago Daily Times
April 29 2003
Peter Ellis
Letter to Editor, by Suzanne George, Dunedin
On my
lawyer's advice, I tried to read Lynley Hood's A City Possessed, but I
perceived a mindset and selective bias which I found insulting to my intelligence
and my own research. My lawyer interacts with social workers and they try to
deal with the sexual abuse epidemic. I suggest Ms Hood interview them and
stop blaming the victim. I believe her public statement that poor women will
make easy pickings of the $10,000 ACC compensation by making false claims for
sexual abuse, reveals prejudice from what I regard as her sheltered,
protected, middle-class lifestyle. I also believe it makes a mockery of her
claim that demonising any class of people is wrong.
Ms Hood states, "I don't pretend to have any answers." Male
professionals are now publishing books with solutions and many books have
been published revealing sexual abuse within New Zealand. Why these books
never came to Ms Hood's attention is beyond me, a non-academic. I believe
strings of adjectives or publicly stating that I do not know what I'm talking
about ( ODT, 22.4.03) is hardly rational debate. My honest opinion of her
so-called academic investigation into "sexual abuse hysteria" and subsequent
public comments: merely "sexual abuse denial".
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