“Soul Murder”: Investigating Spiritual Trauma at the Royal Commission

ABSTRACT

During its five-year tenure, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse established that faith organisations, with inadequate practices of organisational transparency and accountability, hierarchical structures of power, and patriarchal cultures, have poor track records in child protection and high levels of child abuse. Evidence from the Royal Commission hearings identified spiritual trauma as an outcome of child sexual abuse across several religious organisations including the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Salvation Army, the Yeshiva Jewish School in Melbourne and Sydney and the Satyananda Ashram in NSW. The Catholic Church had the highest levels of institutional child sexual assault and was the site of most of the narratives of spiritual suffering. This article examines existing research on spiritual trauma with regard to child sexual abuse, applies a five-point classification model developed by Kenneth Pargament and colleagues for identifying and analysing spiritual damage, and examines the evidence from both survivors and expert witnesses that was heard during relevant public hearings involving the Catholic Church at the Royal Commission. Institutional responses to spiritual injury will be considered and it will be argued that the Catholic Church is a distinctive institution that has produced a powerful culture of spiritual identity and belonging, where the impact of child sexual abuse has resulted in a loss of faith for many survivors, families and communities.     

Inequalities of Redress: Australia’s National Redress Scheme for Institutional Abuse of Children

ABSTRACT

The national redress scheme proposed by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is unique and unusual in the world of government redress. It is unique with its inclusion of both care leavers and non-care leavers (it is the only government scheme to do so), and it is unusual in focusing on sexual abuse alone (18% of government schemes do). These unique and unusual qualities come at a price for justice. Care leavers and non-care leavers are different groups with respect to their experiences of abuse and social status as child victims. Unless these group differences are explicitly recognised in guidelines for the monetary payment, care leavers will be disadvantaged. Two corrective measures are proposed: adopting an inclusive understanding of sexual abuse in closed and open settings, and addressing the negative bias that may result from care leavers’ lower social status as children compared to that of non-care leavers. Their lower status is likely to affect (that is, devalue) judgements of the severity and impact of abuse.     

India and Vietnam compared: Family planning and everyda ylife

Abstract

In India and Vietnam, as in North America, the term “family planning” refers mainly to birth control. There is, however, a broader sense in which this term may be used, namely governmental planning for the welfare and happiness of families, and for democracy and social justice among their members. In this sense family planning is very prominent in Vietnam, but largely absent in India. It is in this sense that I prefer to use the term, although I will first discuss birth control in the overall context of planning for the size of families, as well as for the nation's population growth.     

The Allure of Blue Ribbon Taskforces and The Hard Reality of Immigration Grand Bargains

High status “blue-ribbon” taskforces combine prestige organizations and notable participants to help solve complex problems like immigration reform. Drawing on diverse views one of the ways they can reach common ground is through “grand bargains,” in which each side gives up contested ground to reach a solution through which they gain a major goal. In immigration reform proposals, this takes the form of trading legalization for enforcement. Yet, a closer look at this grand bargain suggestions that the give and take is asymmetric, because the benefits of legalization are immediate and the capacity for effective enforcement many years away. The Brookings-Duke Immigration Report suggests a possible way around this imbalance.     

Medical underservice: The source and the potential of the special district solution

This paper is concerned with the appropriateness of various structural approaches t o the problem of medically underserved areas (MUAS). The failure of the private sector in this regard and the experience with public sector responses to the problem are noted. The paper compares the merits of applying the device of the special district to MUAs with arguments favoring a general government solution. The experience of the state of Arizona with Health Service District legislation is observed.

The logic of the special district and the nature of medical underservice offerslim hope that this device might materially ameliorate the problem. A t the same time, the past initiatives of general purpose government have not served t o erase medical underservice. The point is made t h a t empirical evidence is needed t o fully test the assumptions underlying the arguments of the respective approaches.