Child sexual abuse and the harm it causes

I was not sexually abused, I am one of the lucky ones. But only just.

Recently, the political rhetoric around survivors is that they must be believed, even long before cases have their day in court. Picture: iStock

We are in the middle of an important sitting fortnight in Australian politics, the second last for 2021. But sometimes there are more important things to write about. This week is Childhood Sexual Abuse Awareness Week. Yesterday was the third anniversary of the national apology to survivors and victims of institutional child sexual abuse. Both deserve attention.

Full credit to Australian of the Year Grace Tame for tweeting and talking about the awareness week every single day. Publishing the signs of grooming, the way predators go after their prey. I don’t agree with all of her political commentary. Far from it, in fact. But her advocacy has drawn much needed attention to the issues she is understandably so invested in.

The awareness week encourages anyone who has experienced childhood sexual abuse to speak out and be heard. Actually, no it doesn’t. The website says “our aim this week and every other week is to help more women tell their stories and start the healing process”. I’ll share anyway.

To be very clear from the outset, I was not sexually abused, I am one of the lucky ones. But only just. A teacher, John Joseph Beckett, tried to sexually assault me on a year 8 school trip in 1989. He was convicted for doing so to three other boys on that same trip. I was targeted because back then I was shy and quiet, something most people who know me now probably wish I still was. Just the sort of kid the literature tells us predators go after. The three boys he did abuse were the same.

Because Beckett pleaded guilty (albeit 26 years later), those of us ready to give our testimony in court ultimately didn’t have to. Case closed, guilty as charged. Closure for the boys who lived with being attacked all those decades ago, at last. For years I didn’t even realise he had tried to assault me. Many of us on that camp weren’t aware of his grooming tactics. Not explicitly anyway. We were only 13. I am constantly reminded that kids these days grow up faster, but not really. Not when it comes to these sort of threats.

He would tell us that it was dangerous to wear underwear to bed. “It cuts off the circulation,” I would recite years later having ­assumed it to be true that whole time. When I told my wife that supposed factoid she questioned where on earth I got that from. It was the first time I reflected on what had happened, what it might have represented. The year was 2000. I had believed it the whole time in between. As I worked my way through the higher education system, learning to test and challenge propositions, I never once challenged that one. It was ingrained in my psyche as a truism.

On the camp, Beckett said he would come around and check that we weren’t wearing any underwear by sliding his hand down the side of our leg to check. I assume that’s how it may have started with the boys he abused, but I have never asked. In fact, I have never talked to any of them about it. I vividly remember the explainer Beckett gave at the time. I assume others did too. All part of a case that never needed to go ahead because he eventually pleaded guilty. I believe he targeted me first, early on in the trip. Not realising the importance of refusing to co-operate, I hid down in my sleeping bag and told him I was wearing PJs without undies and he didn’t need to check. It just felt wrong, unnecessary. I was shy and quiet but far from compliant in my personality, even back then. He wouldn’t have known that. He persisted but not for long. I was being too difficult. He moved on.

At that age, I really didn’t understand what was going on – about most things, come to think of it. There was no sexual assault awareness training at school. No talks about what the signs were to look out for. My parents weren’t exactly at the vanguard of socially awkward conversations on such topics. I didn’t even tell them about what happened, much less talk to friends about it. Masculine silence, even at that age.

I can’t remember the first time the police contacted me about the allegations against Beckett, but I was living in Sydney at the time so it must have been after 2009. They were simply working their way through students who had ­attended the trip.

After the case was over and Beckett had pleaded guilty, one of the officers told me that other students had claimed they too were abused on that trip, but they didn’t want to press charges. Whether it was the stigma, uncertainty about the details, or they simply didn’t want to relive the experience I don’t know. And who they even are remains a mystery, it’s their story to tell not mine.

While I am confident my memory is accurate I would be lying to say I don’t have some doubts. Not so much about the ­details of what he did to groom students on the trip. I guess a small part of me wonders if in some dissociative state I have blocked out more that happened. Turning myself into some sort of hero who fought away the now convicted pedophile. I really don’t think so.

I do think about the three boys who were assaulted, and, unless my memory is playing tricks on me, armed with the knowledge I have now of what happened to them I can see changes in their personalities that follow on from that trip. Presumably because of what they experienced.

I find the process of how to deal with sexual assault allegations under the law incredibly vexing. This case was ultimately an easy one. He admitted guilt and was found guilty. Never easy for the victims but easy for the lawyers. Cases where allegations either never go to trial or do but result in not-guilty judgments are quite obviously more difficult. For everyone, victims and those accused.

Recently, the political rhetoric around survivors is that they must be believed, even long before cases have their day in court. If you believe in due process, as I do, that can’t be the right approach, surely? As long as they aren’t disbelieved. We know it is rare for people to make up such claims, but rare doesn’t equate to never.

English jurist William Blackstone famously wrote it’s “better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”. When it comes to sexual abuse, I doubt as many people agree with those odds as once might have. There is no right or wrong view; it’s a philosophical proposition.

Peter van Onselen is the Political Editor at Network 10 and a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.