The Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sex Abuse hadn’t quite concluded when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Social Security Minister Christian Porter embarked on their malfeasant project of creating two tiers of abuse survivors,
In their proposed and ill-named redress scheme, (there can be no “redress,” there can only be recognition of awful suffering) a survivor of childhood sexual abuse will receive no “compensation” if he or she has spent five or more years in jail: The bill excludes anyone convicted of sex offences, or sentenced to prison terms of five years or more for crimes such as serious drug, homicide or fraud offences.
At present in this country it is up to the judiciary to determine the punishment for crimes, not politicians and bureaucrats. Yet if you are a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who has done/is doing time for your crime, you will now be further punished by your ineligibility for recognition.
It isn’t enough that survivors have survived criminal sexual assaults, the majority of which attracted no punishment at all for the perpetrators. It isn’t enough that survivors are already punished as our judiciary deems appropriate. Now Turnbull and Porter have decided to further punish this group of survivors, because they can, and because it might save them a little bit of money they can spend on Peter Dutton’s spin doctors.
Apparently, in the skewed moral universe of Malcolm Turnbull, the damage done by sexual assaults perpetrated upon you when you were a little kid is superseded by your behaviour as an adult.
This is a sickening conflation. Survivors are not being rewarded by “compensation:” it’s a small financial recognition for lives ruined by the failure of authorities to fulfil their basic obligations and responsibilities to children in their care. No adult crime erases the legitimacy of trauma caused by childhood abuse, yet Turnbull’s two-tiered scheme implies that this is the case.
In the LNP world, childhood sexual abuse in itself doesn’t earn you the right to be recognised by your government and the institutions responsible for your suffering. You are only deserving of recognition if you are a good survivor.
It doesn’t matter what happened to you. You still need to behave like the ruling class thinks you should behave. This is what is most important. Not the crimes committed against you. Not the trauma you’ve struggled with your whole life. Not the perpetrators who escape accountability, including those who covered up the crimes against you. No. None of that.
You need to be a nice survivor. You need to behave.
No Place For Sheep 
This government has NO Moral Compass!
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Ain’t that the truth.
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No doubt they are also working on the details of drug-testing candidates, checking for Centrelink debts, maybe also overdue public housing rent, etc. With luck Mr Porter should reduce the deserving count to near zero. The few qualifiers will receive their compensation in the form of a welfare card to spend at participating retailers.
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And 20% of those who contacted the RC were in prison already. Makes your stats look pretty ‘healthy’ for Porter, Bruce.
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Yet another disgraceful behavior by our government on our citizens. No amount spared on a senate inquiry & $500 million on royal commission to tell everyone what everyone already knew. So many reports went unheard, hidden & covered up for years. The very reasons they are excluding are the affects on children as adults. If we were happy, healthy, educated well adapted citizens we wouldn’t need assistance ! Yet no expense spared if you arrive here as a refugee, decent housing health/mental care bla bla not to mention exorbitant $$$$ sent overseas ! When does OUR GOV start looking after our people? And to say they didn’t know what was happening to children is total rubbish ! Some gov institutions were specifically designed to “BREAK’ children, 2 books so to speak, one to the public portrayed as a wonderland of care, nurturing, education, health/mental health & living skills. 2 nd book an experiment designed to terrify, torture, injure humiliate & perform bone breaking work. No care or concern treated less than animals. Yet now are expected to be “normal”. It is not just the survivor that suffers, the next generations & communities also experience the affects, yet I know all this ! I am not educated, not an expert, I am nobody just an ordinary citizen, I am a 2nd generation survivor !
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Why do you blame refugees and foreign aid, what the fuck in your twisted brain do they have to do with sexual assault victims here.
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Gently. She has had bad experiences and they have left scars, so a bit reactive. Hope you have a good Xmas.
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“I am a 2nd generation survivor !”
Interesting term Karen Atkins, I have never heard it before, what does it mean?
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I’d presume it to mean she was abused as a kid then as a spouse or partner. Or her mother could have been in a violent situation with the co partner psychological traits inscribed through experience making her susceptible to falling into a similar relationship.
But you’re right. I hope she clarifies.
Just googling,the term comes up most often through the example of Shoah survivors unconsciously passing their PTSD to their kids through complex social communicative mechanisms, which is something I think Elisabeth on the other thread was examining, since the same sort of stresses probably pass down from DV victims to their kids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma
It sort of hints it how deeply inscribed behaviours become etched into individuals, thus society (other way round?) and thus what a massive and misunderstood problem it is.
Except of course in the situation of suffering evolving out of victims derived of traits handed down and repeated in a next generation’s experience. We used to use the term “neurotic” but that is not quite adequate, it seems, because it doesn’t “retrieve” victims but may even intensify self blaming propensities.
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That notion of our absurd government is quite peculiar. It is well established that a person who has been abused as a child is more likely to be an abuser themselves, more likely to use drugs (and therefore more likely to engage in crime to finance the drugs) and more likely to engage in self-harm and other anti-social behaviours.
To disqualify these people from compensation redress whatever you want to call it is absurd even for the Point Piper Punce masquerading as Prime Minister.
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Whenever I read this sort of stuff about both here and in America, I get a mental picture of cold blooded scum like Turnbull or the oddly named Xtian Porter, or the sort of US filth from government, congress and religion, like Pence and Sessions.
Hard, so hard, to figure it. How has it got back to 1970 and worse still earlier, involving so many forms of denial.
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“How has it got back to 1970 and worse” – Education. The bible-bashing Christian conservatives in the USA have hijacked the syllabus in many cases and are teaching things not unlike the crap they’d like to teach here, if only they can convince us to give them control over our syllabus.
I can return to one of my favourite topics: that education must be compulsory, secular and free.
Compulsory, because otherwise the ignorant of one generation can inflict their ignorance on the next.
Secular, because religious teachings are almost of necessity in denial of science and progress.
Free, because otherwise the wealthy can propagate as an elite their own offspring at the expense of everyone else, and society as a whole.
We see the results of failure to uphold these values in the USA, and it will only get worse.
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