www.peterellis.co.nz
: seeking justice for Peter Ellis : mail to:
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Child sex abuse hysteria:
The Moral Panic
|
Shirley Julich
- sex abuse "expert" |
This page last
updated April 20, 2004
Who is Shirley Julich?
Shirley Julich is a
Senior Lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology
Why is Shirley Julich featured on these
pages?
Shirley Julich is a
good example of a person who has contributed, and still appears to be
contributing to the moral panic and hysteria over child sexual abuse.
Did Shirley Julich have anything to do with
the Peter Ellis case?
Not to the knowledge
of this site.
What expertise does Shirley Julich have?
Julich graduated with
a PhD in Social Policy from
How did Shirley Julich carry out the study?
News reports indicate that in Julich's six year study, she interviewed 21 people who said they were
victims of sexual abuse, two jurors, a judge and two counsellors.
That seems fair enough. What's the concern?
In describing her
research Julich has made outrageously misleading statements that cannot be
supported by her purported findings and methodology. Her reported conclusions
are an extremely good example of publicity for inept research that appears
designed to generate hysteria rather than determine and examine
the facts over the serious problem of sexual abuse
That's serious. Can you give some examples?
Yep, sure can. We'll first look at some news reports from
the time Julich was awarded her PhD.
Dominion Post, July 19 2002 reported that the Julich study says
§
more
than 8500 children will be abused for the first time
§
just
7.5% of adult victims reported childhood sexual abuse to police
§
by the
age of 16, 25% of girls and 9% of boys would have been abused
The Press, July 19 2002 reported that the Julich study found that
the sexual abuse costs
Massey
News, July 22 2002 tells
us that Julich's costs are "based" on a 1993 model for costing social
problems
After this reporting, one would have thought that Julich may have been
careful and concentrated on what she actually researched, rather than treat her
new qualification as a licence to say anything she liked ….. but, alas, no…
Western Leader, August 15 2002 Reporter Chris Schultz tells us that Julich
"spent six years finding out how much sexual abuse is costing New
Zealand" The same
"statistics" in the July reports are repeated, and Julich further
adds that "she found an offender averages 50 victims before being
caught".
North Shore Times, July 25 2002 Reporter Chris Schultz first report. Same
old "statistics", with Julich informing him "Somewhere, we're
making it OK for men to abuse".
Those are the conclusions from interviews
with 26 people?
Appears so! It's absolute rubbish of course. Such conclusions cannot be drawn from interviewing 26 people. But that does not appear
to have prevented Julich from getting a PhD for her efforts! She was immediately criticised at the time:
Dominion Post, July 25 2002 Martin O'Cahill responds to the earlier DomPost report
saying that this is just another case of "jumping on the moral panic
bandwagon". He says: "What alarms me is that again we have studies
telling us how much in danger our children are, while presenting little if any
evidence"
Western Leader, August 22 2002 Gordon Waugh is blunt in telling Julich that "her study lacks
academic rigour and is outrageously misleading" "Her reported conclusions rely on
inadequate data, ill-informed speculation, discredited ideology and misguided
beliefs"
"No-one disputes that sexual abuse occurs and is abhorrent. No-one knows
the actual prevalence of sexual abuse, but many make guesses. Findings about sexual abuse are not a matter
of impression, theory, opinion or speculation. They must be evidence-based on
facts properly determined from empirical scientific methodology.
"Her "research" is similar to a raft of other retrospective
studies which drew fatally flawed conclusions from unverified data. The quite
silly idea that one in every four females and 9 per cent of males are sexually
abused by age 16 has long since been discredited. During her six years of work, Dr Julich
apparently did not raise her head to do a reality check.
"She gathered data from a miniscule sample of 21 "survivors" and
reports from a self-help "survivor" group. She must prove she
externally corroborated the abuse allegations and that her thesis properly
accounted for the well-known range of biases inherent in such retrospective
studies. It is illogical to extrapolate such "findings" to the
general population.
"In the light of accurate Ministry of Justice statistics on sexual abuse
convictions, her conclusion that only 7.5% of abuse is reported is utter
nonsense, as is her finding that an "offender" averages 50 victims
before being caught. Her attribution of the Stockholm Syndrome is laughable.
What's happened since 2002?
This is the sad part.
Shirley Julich appears to have learnt nothing, and continues to treat her PhD
as a licence to whip up hysteria. She
obviously has good intentions - to
prevent the evil of child sexual abuse, but does not seem to have any ethical
appreciation of her responsibility not to present her beliefs and her
speculations as research findings.
NZ Herald, April 19, 2004 Julich reports to a
conference on sexual offending the same "statistics" that she used in
2002, that again appear to have no relation to her own research.
But she comes up with some remarkable new "estimates" of the cost of
being sexually abused, apparently "to justify spending a lot of money on a
(trauma) programme". She claims that the "estimate" is partly
based on her interviews with 21 abuse victims:
$1,545.00 Medical
charges, victims' and offenders' lost income and other individual costs.
$360.00 State
costs of healthcare, welfare, justice.
$81,033.00 Victims'
lost quality of life.
Apparently the last figure
is based on her assertion that victims of sexual abuse earn 10% less than they
would have - for the rest of their lives.
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