AUSTRALIA
The Conversation
Marcus Waters
Lecturer, School of Humanities at Griffith University
I have seen firsthand how child sexual abuse is rife in every part of the Australian community – but only sometimes is that abuse reported in full colour.
It probably won’t surprise you if I say that I’ve had to deal with significant sexual violence and trauma within my Aboriginal family. But that’s also been true within my non-Indigenous family.
So why is it so common to see headlines about “Indigenous sex abuse” – and so rare to see the same language used about white abusers?
A common face of abuse
The Royal Commission on institutionalised child sex abuse is shining a light on dark corners of systematic abuse of Australian kids over many generations. In the vast majority of the terrible cases we’ve heard about, the perpetrators and those who protected them have been seemingly upstanding, often senior, male community leaders.
Old white men, in other words.
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