Cranbrook schoolboy rape allegations: where were the parents?

Cranbrook School in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill.

Whatever happened to proper parenting? We are rightly concerned about incidents in the poorer, further flung suburbs where children as young as eight years old are left to wander the streets at night. We are highly outraged at the violence and drunkenness in Aboriginal communities to which so many innocent children are subjected. There is another form of bad parenting in the wealthier suburbs of our cities and it is almost never subjected to analysis or criticism.

Too many wealthy parents lease out the rearing of their children to nannies and servants. In a society where it is more likely than not that families have both parents working, using nannies if you can afford is fine for filling in the hours when the parents are at their place of employment. The rot sets in when the hours the nannies work grow and grow, meaning some parents spend very little one-on-one time with their children.

An incident in Sydney earlier this month brought home to me just how slack some wealthy parents are. A 15-year-old girl attending a party in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill was allegedly raped. The girl was so drunk she was unaware of the alleged rape until, no doubt with great horror and hurt, she saw the video of the attack taken by the 15-year-old alleged rapist’s mate - yet another 15-year-old boy. The alleged rapist attended Cranbrook school and this event has captured my interest because my nine-year-old son D’Arcy is a student at Cranbrook Junior School.

The incident itself raises a number of issues. What was happening at the home where the party occurred? After all, this is the suburb in which Kerry Packer chose to build his compound. Where were the parents who owned the home? Apparently a 15-year-old girl was allowed to get rotten drunk. Was she raped in a bedroom where the door was closed? One boy films the alleged rape and this is then shared with 50 other students. Holding parties with little or no supervision is the work of parents who cannot be bothered living up to their responsibilities.

A couple of years ago, I walked up Oxford Street at around midnight. Oxford Street is renowned as the party street in Sydney and on my walk it certainly lived up to its reputation. What I remember most about that stroll was the number of young girls so drunk they had passed out on the pavement or been dragged by their friends out of the pubs and clubs because they couldn’t stand up. We have allowed a drinking culture to develop where young people drink to get drunk. Research shows that many of these had already started drinking at home before they set out for the bright lights of the city.

In the world we inhabit, the alleged rapist and the cameraman will have serious charges laid against them. Despite the shocking nature of the alleged crime and the further damage done by the distribution of the video, it is hard to imagine any custodial sentence for the boys involved. If they are first offenders and are represented, as they surely will be, by high-priced, big-time lawyers, it is far more likely they will get not much more than a slap on the wrist. Parental failure is written all over this incident and I fear that this will happen again and again because of that failure.

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