Challenging Institutional Denial: Psychological Discourse,Therapeutic Culture and Public Inquiries

ABSTRACT

The damaging effects of abuse in childhood were repeatedly emphasised in public hearings and in media coverage of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Testimony from earlier Australian inquiries, which documented widespread experiences of child maltreatment, particularly in institutions, also underscored the ongoing and often intergenerational impact of abuse. Taking institutional child abuse inquiries as a case study, this article examines how psychological and therapeutic concepts have been mobilised politically. It argues that therapeutically oriented and psychologically informed cultural narratives of childhood trauma and its ongoing effects have provided a framework for making sense of long-term experiences of adversity and suffering and have enriched attention to “the question of justice” for survivors of historical institutional child abuse.     

Unpacking Adolescent Masculinity: Relations between Boys’ Sexual Harassment Victimization,Perpetration, and Gender Role Beliefs

Journal of Family Violence - Adherence to rigid masculine gender role beliefs is often a significant predictor of violence perpetration; additionally, there is a consistent link among adolescent...     

Reformulating the Buddhist Free Will Problem: Why There can be no Definitive Solution

In recent years, scholars have become increasingly interested in reconstructing a Buddhist stance on the free will problem. Since then, Buddhism has been variously described as implicitly hard determinist, paleo-compatibilist, neo-compatibilist and libertarian. Some scholars, however, question the legitimacy of Buddhist free will theorizing, arguing that Buddhism does not share sufficiently many presuppositions required to articulate the problem. This paper argues that, though Buddhist and Western versions of the free will problem are not perfectly isomorphic, a problem analogous to that expressed in Western philosophy emerges within the Buddhist framework. This analogous problem concerns the difficulty of explaining karmic responsibility in a world governed by dependent origination. This paper seeks to reconstruct an approach to free will consistent with Madhyamaka philosophy and, in so doing, to demonstrate that the mutual exclusivity of positions such as hard determinism and libertarianism is, from the Madhyamaka perspective, merely superficial. By building on the perspectivalist theory advanced by Daniel Breyer, it is clear that a Madhyamaka stance on free will demands the wholesale abandonment of perspectives, such that the idea of any one solution as definitive is disavowed. Taken to its logical conclusion, therefore, perspectivalism entails the relative truth of perspectivalism itself.     

Examining the Role of School Resource Officers on School Safety and Crisis Response Teams

School resource officers (SROs) are being increasingly employed in schools to respond to incidents of school violence and to help address safety concerns among students and staff. While previous research on school safety and crisis teams has examined the role of school mental health professionals’ and administrators, fewer studies have evaluated the role of the SRO. The current study examined differences between SROs, school administrators, and school mental health professionals (i.e., school psychologists, school counselors, social workers) regarding experiences with crisis events, as well as perceived effectiveness of crisis prevention and response strategies. The most common crisis events across professionals included student assaults, drug offenses, and mandated child abuse and neglect reporting. While SROs and school mental health professionals had similar ratings of school safety strategies, school administrators had less effective appraisals of crisis response plans and crisis postvention activities. Implications for practice and future directions for research are reviewed.     

Drug courts for DWI offenders? The effectiveness of two hybrid drug courts on DWI offenders

The effectiveness of drug courts for illegal drug-involved offenders has been well documented (Belenko, 1998, 2001; Wilson, Mitchell, & MacKenzie, 2006), however, few studies had examined whether they work for repeat “driving while intoxicated” (DWI) or “driving under the influence” (DUI) offenders. The current study examined sixty-six offenders who had completed one of two hybrid DUI/drug courts (compared to eighty-six similar parolees) operating in two small cities in a single midwestern state. Results suggested that among non-DUI offenders, completion of the drug court program reduced recidivism, as might be expected; however, among the subsample of chronic DUI offenders no significant recidivism reduction was noted. These results add to the small, but growing literature suggesting that DUI courts (as they are currently being implemented) may not be an effective way to reduce the occurrence of repeat DUI offenses. Suggestions for DUI court implementation and future research are presented.