Opinion: Bravehearts’ Hetty Johnston calls for children’s ombudsman
HETTY Johnston has seen an encyclopedia of depravities against children. Now the child protection crusader wants radical changes to keep children safe at any cost.
Opinion
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SOME Queensland parents are mongrels who rent their young children to strangers for sex. Judges are still too soft on sex offenders. And the Government still doesn’t get it.
So says Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston, who wants a children’s ombudsman who does not have to kowtow to government departments, which pretend there is no child-protection crisis.
POLICE: Look inside state’s ‘house of harm’
“If people could see what happens to children the same way they see baby seals being clubbed, there would be immediate uproar and demands for change,” Johnston said.
“But there is no uproar because the hurt is hidden.”
Many of the 9000 children under child-protection watch are suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from frequent sexual abuse and neglect.
And Queensland has fallen behind in investigation of serious complaints.
Johnston is the nation’s leading child-protection crusader. She also advocated orphanage-styled shelters for abused children although she baulks at words like “orphanage” or “institution” because of grim historical undertones.
She also has a message for parents who cannot stop bashing or sexually molesting their own children: “Hand them in, walk away and do not come back.”
It’s nearly 20 years since Johnston launched Bravehearts. Since then she has seen an encyclopedia of depravities against children.
“We have 12 and 13-year-olds threatening to jump off buildings because they have been traumatised by repeated abuse,” she said.
“We can’t stop every child who wants to hurt themselves, but we can stop some.
“We must try. Child sex abuse is preventable.
“Yet despite everything we know, courts are still letting pedophiles out of jail.
“Let them rot in jail. I don’t care. Send them to Great Keppel Island or to Mars. Just send them anywhere away from children.
“If you can’t release them with the absolute certainty they won’t reoffend, then don’t release them.
“These offenders have surrendered their rights.”
She has a list of pedophiles who abused children after being given a second chance and let out of jail.
Johnston set up Bravehearts in 1969 after a member of her own family revealed she had suffered from sexual abuse.
“I believe there is a serious crisis in child protection, especially in the regions.
“We have 74 (children at risk) still in the Caboolture-Strathpine region alone.”
She described them as high-needs children with nowhere to go.
“I blame the governments; not particularly this one but all of them.
“They have repeatedly failed to prioritise the safety of the child above all else. There is nothing more important than the protection of children.
“But governments still don’t get it.”
She said a child must not be allowed back to a home where there was a suspicion of harm until a thorough investigation had been completed.
Johnston also said it should be mandatory for hospital clinicians, police and childcare workers to keep abused children in protection – for months if necessary.
She conceded it was not so easy.
“If a child is being bashed or hurt in the home it has to be taken away from the parents, simple as that. And how very righteous we sound in saying that,” she said. “The next question is: Where do you put this child? Do you want to take it home with you?”
Fosters homes are an undependable stopgap.
“We have an enormous number of amazing foster carers out there who do an incredible job and we owe them so much.
“But there are a few out there who aren’t so terrific. Quite often the government knows who they are but they keep putting children there anyway because there is no alternative.”
A child can be removed temporarily until the parents’ behaviour improves. With help they may become good parents or “good enough” parents, she said.
Children can spend years being “passed around” to different foster families.
The foster carers suffer when they have to relinquish a child they have grown to love.
“They fall in love with this child and then have to hand it back,” said Johnston. “It’s why a lot of people don’t do fostering. They can’t cope with the notion the child is being returned to somewhere unsafe or precarious.”
Some children would be better off in an institution.
She knew people who had positive experiences in orphanages.
“They say it is better than being passed around,” she said.
“They have the same school and a sense of belonging.
“Some children who have been in institutions say it’s the only ‘family’ they ever had.”
As she spoke the Queensland Government was facing fresh allegations it condoned cruelty to children in custody in adult jails.
Police were also under the spotlight for apparently failing to alert Child Safety after children were found living in a bikie drug den at Caboolture after two raids there late last year. In January this year The Courier-Mail reported police fears for the safety of a three-year-old girl who shot herself in the leg while playing with a homemade gun.
Child Safety informants told me there was no record of a formal police notification after the raids last year.
In court documents, police allege the young girl and her siblings were exposed to drugs and violence as their parents allegedly trafficked methamphetamine from the home.
It appears there was a communication breakdown between departments.
It wasn’t until the girl shot herself that Child Safety became involved. Child Safety sources said the girl now lived with her grandmother.
All that travel will be making him fizzy
TYSON Stelzer can’t quite remember how many times he has travelled to France in recent years to sip champagne.
At least 12, he says.
He does know that he will be going back at least three or four times a year from now on to drink some more.
Stelzer, 41, from Tarragindi on Brisbane’s Southside has suddenly become an international champagne guru with television appearances and masterclasses being held around the globe. He stunned the wine world last year, being named International Wine and Spirit Communicator of the Year largely because of the soar-away success of his annual The Champagne Guide (Hardie Grant).
Stelzer is a good writer and the book contains entertaining essays of the great drink – as well as ratings.
This year he is enamoured with the full range of Bollinger bubbles. And he awarded 100 points to the Bollinger R D Extra Brut 1996 which he describes as a “towering masterpiece” with “powerful, luscious and awe-inspiring” flavours laden with “butterscotch, spice, toast and dried fruits”. It sells for around $460 a bottle but he hastens to add you can buy a descent Bolly for less than $60.
Stelzer’s life has taken a different path since he was science master at Trinity Lutheran College on the Gold Coast.
At university he studied physics, mathematics and biblical studies – all very handy for his new career, he says.
He points out that monks were the first great winemakers.
He met his wife Rachael at church and they are regulars at Our Saviour Lutheran Church at Rochedale. They have three children: Linder, 7, Huon, 5, and Vaughn, 11 months.
“I think God has blessed us with amazing wine and food in this country,” he said.
Green zealots undermined
THE resources sector has struck back against Green zealots by highlighting the vital role played by the mining industry in the production of solar panels and wind turbines.
It’s brilliant and it will annoy the hell out of the hypocritical carrot munchers who slam mining while benefiting from it.
We can thank sandminers for the minerals used in solar panels while showing gratitude to the bauxite miners of Cape York for the raw material used to make the aluminium frames.
“Every part of a solar panel is manufactured from mined metals and materials,” said Queensland Resources council boss Michael Roche.
“... The wiring from a solar panel on your roof to your house is made from copper, like that mined and smelted in Queensland’s northwest minerals province centred on Mount Isa and Cloncurry and then refined in Townsville.”
And wind turbines are dependent on coal and steel.
”The wind turbine’s generator is 65 per cent steel, and 35 per cent copper – again a Queensland product,” Roche said.
Roche gave the example of a typical sunny day in Queensland last week with the state using 6244 megawatts (MW) of power, with 4796MW sourced from coal, 578MW from gas and 828MW from solar.
“While the role of solar and wind power is no doubt set to grow in Queensland, our coal and gas will help to ensure we avoid the power supply crisis besetting South Australia,” Rocher said.
I will be very keen to see how the Greens and other left-wing pretenders react to this campaign.
P.S …
New tunes for an old town
DAVID Janetzki made his maiden speech in State Parliament this week watched from the public gallery by his 92-year-old grandmother, Ruth Janetzki, and his opera-singing wife Melinda.
The Member for Toowoomba South grew up on a farm. “My ancestors settled on the Darling Downs in the mid to late 1800s, fleeing religious persecution,” he said. “I carry a Polish name but my ancestors arrived from Prussia,” he said.
Janetzki was captain of Concordia Lutheran College in Toowoomba and captain of the First XI before studying law and economics at the University of Queensland.
Opera buffs may hear Melinda’s soaring coloratura delivering Joseph Haydn’s Nun beut die Fleur at the Sydney Opera House by googling Melinda van der Meulen.
Janetzki was upbeat about his hometown, saying a $10 billion investment boom would send the population soaring 40 per cent by 2031. He said Toowoomba was a harmonious, multicultural city where other people’s beliefs were respected. Janetzki said the Islamic community was planning a mosque. And the city would soon be welcoming Orthodox Christian refugees from war-torn Syria.
Slurs were old sex
I SAW history repeat itself in Federal Parliament this week when Senator Jacqui Lambie smeared backbencher Cory Bernardi by likening him to an “angry prostitute lecturing us about the benefits of celibacy”.
Bernardi had dared to criticise Labor’s Sam Dastyari.
Lambie added: “Before I receive unfair criticism from the sex workers, I apologise to them profusely for comparing them to Senator Bernardi. Prostitutes are far more honest, sincere, humane, compassionate and better bang for buck than Senator Bernardi will ever be.”
Her comments echoed a similar “apology” made by Burnett MP Rob Messenger to Peter Beattie in February 2007. Said Messenger: “Last night during the whistleblowers debate I compared him wearing a dinner suit and talking about whistleblowing to a prostitute in a ball gown talking about celibacy. The Premier claimed this morning that my remarks were unparliamentary and that I should apologise. I have had this morning to think about my comments and reflect on my behaviour. I have decided that the Premier is right. My comments were unparliamentary and I should apologise. So I wholeheartedly and sincerely apologise to the prostitutes of Queensland.”
Messenger lost his seat in 2012 and after a stint with Palmer United Party is now Lambie’s chief-of-staff.
Abuse alarm
OPPOSITION Child Safety spokeswoman Ros Bates this week delivered one of the largest petitions ever handed to State Parliament. It contained the signatures of more than 30,000 people demanding suspected child abuse cases be treated as emergencies.
Alicia Duvall, from Caboolture, the author of the petition, was in the House to see it tabled.
Wine tourism
THE number of Japanese tourists visiting Queensland’s north is soaring. And the Granite Belt is hoping for a slice of the action.
A delegation of wine industry figures from Japan were taken on a tasting tour to five Queensland wineries recently by Sirromet chief winemaker Adam Chapman.
The group spent a week at Sirromet’s Seven Scenes, St Judes and Night Sky vineyards and also visited the firm’s state-of-the-art flagship winery at Mount Cotton. The guests also visited Ballandean Estate, Golden Grove, Symphony Hill and Tobin Wines. Japan is also a growing export market for Aussie wine.
Irritant of the week
THE blundering, ineffectual Treasurer, Curtis Pitt, whose lamentable grasp of state finances has earned him the nickname Captain Risky.
He said what?
“TODAY’S legislation makes a mockery of an independent umpire. The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission now exists in name only.” Queensland Local Government Association boss Greg Hallam accuses Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace of betraying local councils with new laws for awards for local government workers.
Twitter: @DesHoughton
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