Parental Alienation Syndrome in Spain: opposed by the Government but accepted in the Courts

ABSTRACT

For over fifteen years, Spain has seen the promulgation of feminist-inspired legal frameworks to combat male violence against women and, as a result, Spanish law contains a variety of mechanisms that target male violence. However, the parallel dissemination of the pseudo-scientific concept of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), especially since 2004, has become a tool to stall the enforcement of gender equality legislation. Specifically, PAS is causing severe harm in legal procedures related to marital breakdown. Both the government and the General Council of the Judiciary have taken a stand against the deployment of PAS in the legal system, but the notion of parental alienation is still widely used in family courts. This article analyses the contemporary significance of PAS in Spain. It grounds itself in an examination of key government reports and legal cases, and draws on qualitative survey data from interviews with 20 women who have been either formally accused, or threatened with accusations of parental alienation.     

当前对青少年禁毒宣传教育的模式与缺陷——以北京市禁毒宣传教育为视角

青少年毒品滥用是较为突出的社会问题。青少年的心智尚未完全成型,社会文化的多元化以及毒品滥用种类的变化,直接影响着青少年滥用毒品的规模及样态。作为仍旧存在更生可能的青少年,法律和政策应以教育和矫正为主,在防治青少年毒品滥用的策略上,应当以"事前预防"为主要手段。针对青少年群体的现实状况,应当在宣传教育的主体、机构设置以及宣传手段和内容上与其他受众相区别,以求获得更为良好的效果。     

Sexual Abuse as the Core Transgression of Childhood Innocence: Unintended Consequences for Care Leavers

ABSTRACT

The decision of the Gillard government to establish a royal commission in 2012 was acclaimed by care leavers. However, they were soon disillusioned: it was not the royal commission for which they had long struggled. Its terms of reference were too broad, encompassing a range of institutions never before the subject of official inquiries, yet also too narrowly focused on sexual abuse. Care leavers who suffered other forms of abuse were excluded. This paper argues that, while care leaver advocacy contributed to the decision to establish a royal commission, the agenda was a product of other pressures fuelled by state-based inquiries about cover-ups of sexual abuse of children, particularly by clergy. Sexual abuse could no longer be regarded as a sin to be handled in-house by institutions but a crime for which the state carried superordinate responsibility. The government had to intervene to address society’s “ultimate collective shame”. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has made a massive contribution to our understanding of child sexual abuse and to reforms in child protection policy and practice. But its mandate created unintended consequences, and questions remain about the unmet needs of care leavers who suffered other forms of abuse.     

“I Fought. I Screamed. I Bit”: The Assertion of Rights Within Historic Abuse Inquiry Transcripts

ABSTRACT

This article examines how treating historic abuse inquiry testimonies as retrospective assertions of rights can help to shed light on how this abuse was able to occur and how memories are recalled in an inquiry environment. It presents its approach as a possible framework for other historians seeking to analyse testimonies with sensitivity. It uses, as an example, a case study from the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concerning two interrelated “homes” for girls, showing the ways in which abuse survivors can use their testimonies to assert rights denied them in the past and further the goals of public inquiries.     

“Children in a Terrible State”: Understandings of Trauma and Child Sexual Assault in 1970s and 1980s Australia*

ABSTRACT

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has shown us the multitude of ways that children were vulnerable to sexual violence. This article explores child sexual abuse outside of institutions, and the development of concepts of trauma in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. From the mid-1970s, there was increased social, medical and legal focus on child abuse. Driven originally by feminists, there was a new interest in the psychological impacts of abuse, including analysis of the grief, despair, fear and anger experienced by survivors. The explosion of interest in child sexual abuse was mainstreamed in the Royal Commission into Human Relationships (1974–1978) and in discussion leading up to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989). Across the 1980s, public recognition grew concerning the dangers of sexual violence against children, and, in particular, the increased knowledge and interest in intra-familial assaults. This article will chart the dramatic shifts in public consciousness around sexual abuse, particularly around ideas of harm and trauma. It will also suggest that despite a substantial change in cultural views on sexual assault, improvements for child victims were slow to filter through to the criminal justice system.     

“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.     

PEDOPHILIA

Sex offenses against children are considered the worst of crimes, even among criminals themselves. Attitudes have changed from blaming the victim to holding the perpetrator responsible for the actions. The prevalence of such offenses continues unabated despite the stigma for the offender and the irreparable trauma to the victim. Society and the medical and legal communities have to present a more feasible definition of the problem, addressing specifically the acts that fall under the term of pedophilia . A plan needs to be formulated by various disciplines working together for the common goal of identifying the most effective method to deal with the victims and perpetrator and also to lower the incidence and recidivism rates. Different psychological and biological tests have been devised for investigations but fall short of the desired purpose. Various treatment modalities have been suggested and tried, but much work still needs to be done in that area.