Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #926 Who Tops the List of Child Sexual Abusers?

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#926 Who Tops the List of Child Sexual Abusers? · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
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Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
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Speaker 2: once answers.
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Speaker 1: Now Today a very serious conversation on the Happy Families podcast,
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Speaker 1: Probably a conversation that doesn't have much to do with
0:17
Speaker 1: Happy Families. In fact, it's the kind of thing that
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Speaker 1: can be tremendously challenging. Just a warning before we dive
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Speaker 1: into the content today. This is definitely not content that
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Speaker 1: is going to be what you might call typically safe
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Speaker 1: for children, especially younger children. We are going to be
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Speaker 1: talking about findings from the Australian Child Male Treatment Study
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Speaker 1: and a conversation about abuse, specifically sexual abuse of children.
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Speaker 1: So please be mindful that that's what the content will be,
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Speaker 1: and be judicious and use your discernment in terms of
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Speaker 1: whether or not you or your children will do well
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Speaker 1: by listening to it. But my goodness, it's important. My
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Speaker 1: guest on the podcast today's doctor Ben Matthews. He's a
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Speaker 1: Research professor in the School of Law at QUT Queensland
1:00
Speaker 1: University of Technology here in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, also the
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Speaker 1: Principal Research Fellow in the qt Faculty of Business and
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Speaker 1: Law and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg
1:13
Speaker 1: School of Public Health. Dr Matthews was a Professorial Fellow
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Speaker 1: of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
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Speaker 1: He's published three books, twenty government reports, one hundred and
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Speaker 1: twenty five refereed scholarly articles and book chapters, and fifty
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Speaker 1: law reform submissions on issues concerning children and the law,
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Speaker 1: and over one hundred national and international conference presentations. And
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Speaker 1: he works on the Australian Child Maltreatment Study. Dr Matthews,
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Speaker 1: it's really a privileged to have you on the podcast
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Speaker 1: to talk about a topic that is sorted an unfortunate
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Speaker 1: and yet so important. Really appreciate your joining me now.
1:51
Speaker 2: Thanks justin. Great to be with you, and greetings to
1:55
Speaker 2: all your listeners. This is a really important topic and look,
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Speaker 2: actually this is actually about happy families and I'll explain
2:01
Speaker 2: a bit more about why that's so. So it's good
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Speaker 2: to be contributing to a podcast for your organization.
2:09
Speaker 1: Ben, let's set the stage. The name of the study,
2:11
Speaker 1: the U Strange Child Male Treatment Study. What's it actually
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Speaker 1: all about? Can you give us some detail?
2:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this was a massive study that we conducted
2:18
Speaker 2: over the last five years, so I led a team
2:21
Speaker 2: of ten chief investigators. Basically, it was a very, very
2:25
Speaker 2: broad and comprehensive study, the biggest and most rigorous of
2:28
Speaker 2: its type in Australia and significant globally. Basically, what we
2:32
Speaker 2: did is we surveyed eight and a half thousand Australians
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Speaker 2: eight sixteen and over to establish for the first time
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Speaker 2: the true prevalence within the population across Australia of all
2:44
Speaker 2: five types of child male treatment. So we measured sexual abuse,
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Speaker 2: physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect and exposure to domestic violence
2:53
Speaker 2: in childhood and those experiences right across the span of childhood,
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Speaker 2: so right up to age eighteen. So in other words,
3:00
Speaker 2: in short, we've found out the true percentage of kids
3:03
Speaker 2: who experience those types of forms of male treatment. We
3:07
Speaker 2: then identified information about the nature of those experiences, so
3:11
Speaker 2: for example, who is it, who inflicts it, the age
3:14
Speaker 2: at which it starts and so on. Importantly, we then
3:17
Speaker 2: measured the associated health outcomes of those experiences, especially mental
3:22
Speaker 2: health outcomes and health risk behaviors things like self harm,
3:26
Speaker 2: suicide attempt and drug dependence. So in other words, we've
3:30
Speaker 2: found the extent of child male treatment in Australia. We've
3:34
Speaker 2: found differences in how it affects girls and boys. We've
3:37
Speaker 2: found whether the trends have increased or decreased over time
3:41
Speaker 2: in Australian society, and we've found out which types of
3:44
Speaker 2: maltreatment are particularly damaging for health.
3:48
Speaker 1: I feel like, as you described that, then we could
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Speaker 1: probably do a ten part podcast series on all of
3:54
Speaker 1: the research findings that have come out of this study.
3:57
Speaker 1: Obviously so important. The one that I want to focus
3:59
Speaker 1: on today, and it's only one, unfortunately, I wish we
4:03
Speaker 1: could do them all is a finding from the study
4:06
Speaker 1: that looked at sexual abuse and specifically who is most
4:10
Speaker 1: likely to be an abuser. This is something that just
4:14
Speaker 1: everything in me. I panicked is the right word. That's
4:18
Speaker 1: probably a little bit too alarmis, but certainly it was
4:22
Speaker 1: just shocking. Can you talk me through your findings around
4:25
Speaker 1: this specific area please, because it's the kind of thing
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Speaker 1: that I think every parent needs.
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Speaker 2: To know absolutely, and look, everyone does need to know this.
4:32
Speaker 2: These are really really important findings in terms of child
4:36
Speaker 2: sexual abuse. We found a prevalence across the population of
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Speaker 2: twenty eight and a half percent, so a significant proportion
4:44
Speaker 2: of the population of experienced sexual abuse in childhood.
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Speaker 1: It's a stunning number. A quarter more than a quarter,
4:50
Speaker 1: more than a.
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Speaker 2: Quarter, so slightly more than one in for.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about who's doing it, who's most at risk.
4:56
Speaker 1: Can we step through what you found there?
4:58
Speaker 2: The first thing I want to say is that they
4:59
Speaker 2: have has been a decline, a slight decline in sexual
5:03
Speaker 2: abuse in recent years. So one of the great things
5:05
Speaker 2: our study enabled us to do is by looking at
5:09
Speaker 2: prevalence rates in different age groups in our study, we're
5:12
Speaker 2: able to see has the rate of sexual abuse in
5:15
Speaker 2: the population increased, decreased, or stayed about the same, and
5:19
Speaker 2: if so, have trends varied by different kind of perpetrator group.
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Speaker 2: So the first good thing to report is that yes,
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Speaker 2: sexual abuse has in fact declined, and we know that
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Speaker 2: from comparing the rate from our sixteen to twenty four
5:33
Speaker 2: year olds in our sample with those who are aged
5:35
Speaker 2: twenty five to forty four and those who are aged
5:38
Speaker 2: forty five and above right through to sixty five plus.
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Speaker 2: So there's some good news there, and that shows us
5:44
Speaker 2: that some of the prevention efforts that we've implemented as
5:48
Speaker 2: a country have been having a good positive effect in
5:52
Speaker 2: reducing child sexual abuses. So that is fantastic news. It
5:55
Speaker 2: shows that change is possible and change continues to be required.
6:00
Speaker 2: So the first thing we also need to say is
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Speaker 2: that sexual abuse is still a problem. So even within
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Speaker 2: the sixteen to twenty four year age group, which is
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Speaker 2: who I'll talk about most today, we have twenty five
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Speaker 2: point seven percent prevalence, and it's particularly affecting girls rather
6:17
Speaker 2: than boys. So about thirty five percent of girls in
6:21
Speaker 2: our sixteen girls and young women in our sixteen to
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Speaker 2: twenty four year group experienced sexual abuse before they turned eighteen,
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Speaker 2: versus say fourteen percent of boys and young men.
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Speaker 1: And when you say they experienced it, it didn't necessarily
6:34
Speaker 1: have to be when they were a teenager. Okay, so
6:36
Speaker 1: this is retrospective, right, It might have been when there
6:38
Speaker 1: were four or five, eight twelve.
6:40
Speaker 2: Exactly. What we then did justin and this is what
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Speaker 2: I think you're really interested in today, is who is
6:47
Speaker 2: it who inflicted those acts of sexual abuse? So we
6:51
Speaker 2: asked four questions about sexual abuse, and for each one
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Speaker 2: of those questions where someone said, yes, that happened to me,
6:58
Speaker 2: we asked who was it who did it? And so
7:01
Speaker 2: this enabled us to identify which perpetrators have inflicted sexual
7:05
Speaker 2: abuse at different rates across time in Australian society.
7:09
Speaker 1: So as a parent of six daughters, for me to
7:12
Speaker 1: keep my kids safe, I need to know what to
7:15
Speaker 1: teach them. And obviously part of this is the conversations
7:18
Speaker 1: that I have with them about their own safety and protection.
7:20
Speaker 1: But it's also helping them to stay away from places
7:22
Speaker 1: where they could be at increased risk. Who did you
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Speaker 1: find were the kinds of people who would put children
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Speaker 1: at increased risk?
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Speaker 2: Well, look, it's a complex and nuanced picture. So I'm
7:35
Speaker 2: glad we've got a good amount of time to talk
7:38
Speaker 2: about this today, and it's important not to overgeneralize or oversimplify.
7:43
Speaker 2: The first thing I want to say is that sexual
7:46
Speaker 2: abuse by adult perpetrators, even in the younger generation that
7:51
Speaker 2: we surveyed, is still a significant problem. Okay, So we
7:55
Speaker 2: found eleven point seven percent of our sixteen to twenty
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Speaker 2: four year old sample. We can extrapolate that across the
8:01
Speaker 2: nation because we had a nationally representative sample in our survey,
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Speaker 2: eleven point seven percent, so one in eight experienced sexual
8:10
Speaker 2: abuse by an adult perpetrator. Okay, So in other words,
8:15
Speaker 2: if you went into any average year twelve classroom in
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Speaker 2: Australia that has say thirty thirty two kids in that
8:22
Speaker 2: year twelve classroom, four of them will have experienced sexual
8:26
Speaker 2: abuse by an adult perpetrator. Okay, and I'll come back
8:31
Speaker 2: to how we measured sexual abuse in a moment, so
8:33
Speaker 2: you know the kinds of acts that we looked at.
8:36
Speaker 2: But we did also find that within our sixteen to
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Speaker 2: twenty four year olds, we had a rate of eighteen
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Speaker 2: point two percent who experienced sexual abuse by another adolescent.
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Speaker 2: That is some another kid eight under eighteen. Okay, so
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Speaker 2: eighteen percent, so close to one in five of kids
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Speaker 2: in contemporary Australia have experienced it at least one sexual
9:00
Speaker 2: abuse of act by another adolescent age under eighteen. And
9:05
Speaker 2: when we looked a little bit further at that, we
9:07
Speaker 2: find that most of those adolescent perpetrators are other kids
9:10
Speaker 2: that the child knew.
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Speaker 1: Okay, question for you around that, how do you distinguish
9:15
Speaker 1: between what I might generously call adolescent experimentation and sexual abuse.
9:25
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
9:27
Speaker 1: I don't want to minimize the impact that that can have.
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Speaker 1: It can still be abusive, but there are kids who
9:32
Speaker 1: well younger kids play doctors and nurses and we discourage that,
9:36
Speaker 1: but we also recognize that they're kids and they're just
9:38
Speaker 1: sort of learning about their bodies. Where do you draw
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Speaker 1: the line on.
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Speaker 2: That absolutely very important question, And this is all about
9:45
Speaker 2: the proper definition of what is child sexual abuse and
9:48
Speaker 2: what is not and what is in your term, say,
9:52
Speaker 2: adolescent experimentation. And you referred to say young kids playing
9:55
Speaker 2: doctors and nurses, and looku I would say, you know,
9:58
Speaker 2: a lot of people probably don't discourage that, and that's
10:02
Speaker 2: probably okay because that's a developmentally normative thing for very
10:07
Speaker 2: young kids to do. It's about learning about their bodies.
10:10
Speaker 2: There's no problem with that. That is not child sexual abuse.
10:13
Speaker 2: So some things that we call adolescent experimentation or early
10:17
Speaker 2: childhood experimentation for want of a better term, adolescent experimentation
10:23
Speaker 2: that is developmentally normal, natural, common, and typical in childhood
10:28
Speaker 2: and adolescents. Involves consensual acts between similarly aged.
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Speaker 1: Peers, coercion, there's no power.
10:37
Speaker 2: No coercion, no pressure, no clear power imbalance. Right, Consent
10:43
Speaker 2: is key. Consent is key.
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Speaker 1: In fact, a funny story before you go on. We
10:48
Speaker 1: caught our kids with their cousins. They were doing some well,
10:52
Speaker 1: they weren't actually doing doctors and nurses. They were doing
10:54
Speaker 1: a shopping trip, but when they were paying for the groceries,
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Speaker 1: one of the kids had pulled their pants down and
11:00
Speaker 1: they were using their bum crack as the credit card slot,
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Speaker 1: and they found my mum's credit cards and they were
11:05
Speaker 1: sliding the credit cards down the bump crack. And of
11:08
Speaker 1: course this is not child abuse. This is just fun
11:12
Speaker 1: kid experimentation that we still put a stop to and
11:16
Speaker 1: explain why you do I get your credit card dirty?
11:19
Speaker 2: Right, But.
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Speaker 1: Obviously there's a there's a distinct difference, and the one
11:23
Speaker 1: that you're drawing the line under most clearly here is consensual.
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Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. And so I'll just give a little background here.
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Speaker 2: There's been a lot of dispute even amongst the scientific
11:38
Speaker 2: field for decades about how do we properly define what
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Speaker 2: child sexual abuse is and it's not. And it's really
11:43
Speaker 2: important to do that very well because it has huge implications,
11:48
Speaker 2: say for epiity and the logical studies like ours about
11:51
Speaker 2: what you can't and what you don't, but it's also
11:53
Speaker 2: got implications for legal fields, for policy and prevention, practice,
11:57
Speaker 2: for education of kids and so on. Before our study commenced,
12:02
Speaker 2: I own a colleague of mind from overseas, spent about
12:05
Speaker 2: three years doing a really systematic review and analysis and
12:09
Speaker 2: came up with a model, a conceptual model of what
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Speaker 2: child sexual abuse is, and that has really helped to
12:15
Speaker 2: advance the field. And I'll just give you the conceptual
12:17
Speaker 2: model or definition that we came up with and then
12:20
Speaker 2: explain what we measured in our study, just so we
12:22
Speaker 2: know what we're talking about here. So basically based on
12:26
Speaker 2: our systematic review and analysis, and this was published in
12:30
Speaker 2: the leading journal in the world, we define sexual abuse
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Speaker 2: as a sexual act and this model has a number
12:37
Speaker 2: of components. I'll just take you through them. So a
12:40
Speaker 2: sexual act, it can include physical contact, but it can
12:43
Speaker 2: also involve a non contact act by any adult or child.
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Speaker 2: So sexual abuse can be inflicted by another adolescent aged
12:53
Speaker 2: under eighteen who's in a position of any kind of
12:56
Speaker 2: power over the child victim. It could be physical power, psychological,
13:01
Speaker 2: something relational to obtain sexual gratification. Okay, and that's an
13:06
Speaker 2: important point. When the child victim either doesn't have any
13:10
Speaker 2: capacity to consent to sex, so let's say they're really little,
13:14
Speaker 2: or they technically have capacity that is cognitive capacity. Let's
13:18
Speaker 2: say they're sixteen seventeen, but they did not actually provide consent.
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Speaker 2: So it's a few different components to that model, all
13:26
Speaker 2: of which are important and go into a model of
13:28
Speaker 2: what child sexual abuse is and helps to exclude other
13:31
Speaker 2: things like developmentally normal play from that definition. And to
13:36
Speaker 2: just to round off this comment justin to explain how
13:40
Speaker 2: that then translates to operational definitions of sexual abuse and
13:44
Speaker 2: the things that we measured in our study. It includes
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Speaker 2: things like forced sexual intercourse, whether vaginal, oral, or anal.
13:52
Speaker 2: It includes attempted force sexual intercourse, forced sexual touching. They're
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Speaker 2: three contact types of sexual abuse, and then on contact
14:00
Speaker 2: sexual act. So for example, forcing a child to look
14:04
Speaker 2: at someone else's private parts or forcibly looking at a
14:07
Speaker 2: child's private parts.
14:09
Speaker 1: It leads me feeling a little queasy and very uneasy.
14:13
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking about practical terms now. So I've heard
14:17
Speaker 1: far too many stories about kids who have been harmed
14:20
Speaker 1: by the adolescent boy up the road, or the big
14:25
Speaker 1: brother or the big cousin, or they've gone to somebody's
14:28
Speaker 1: house and there's been a visitor there. These stories are prolific.
14:33
Speaker 1: I'm sure that you've heard far more of them than
14:35
Speaker 1: I have. What does this mean in practical terms for
14:38
Speaker 1: families who let their kids play in the street or
14:40
Speaker 1: the park down the road, or at someone's house just
14:44
Speaker 1: up the road. What does a parent do here? Because
14:47
Speaker 1: we can't help more the.
14:50
Speaker 2: Good question, but a couple of things tonight. First is
14:54
Speaker 2: that it's important to be aware of who is more
14:57
Speaker 2: likely to be a sexual abusive perpetrator against kids and
15:02
Speaker 2: who is not, So we now know that you know
15:05
Speaker 2: strained to danger. It's an old dative myth. It's not
15:09
Speaker 2: that unknown people never sexually abuse kids, but in the
15:12
Speaker 2: big picture, it's much more rare for unknown people to.
15:17
Speaker 1: Abuse kids than known people miniscry percentage.
15:20
Speaker 2: Exactly, And so translating this to our study into young
15:24
Speaker 2: kids today and to parents today, it's good to know
15:27
Speaker 2: who your kids are socializing with. And part of knowing
15:30
Speaker 2: who you could socialize with is to talk to them
15:32
Speaker 2: and listen to them and show an ongoing interest in
15:36
Speaker 2: our lives and to know about what's going on in
15:38
Speaker 2: their lives. It's also important to develop sufficiently close relationships
15:44
Speaker 2: with your kids that you have conversations about sex and
15:48
Speaker 2: relationships and about knowing about consent and about knowing about
15:53
Speaker 2: gender equality about knowing what's okay for other people to
15:57
Speaker 2: do to your kids, but also what's okay not okay
16:00
Speaker 2: for your kids to do to other kids. So having
16:04
Speaker 2: that broad relational connection with your kids and creating space
16:09
Speaker 2: where you have healthy conversations about sex and development and
16:13
Speaker 2: relationships and all the skills and attributes that go towards
16:18
Speaker 2: healthy human beings and healthy relationships are strong protective factors.
16:24
Speaker 2: One other thing just before I round off that comment,
16:26
Speaker 2: justin as well as knowing who you kids are socializing with,
16:30
Speaker 2: it can be helpful, especially in kind of riskier situations
16:33
Speaker 2: let's say parties where fifteen, sixteen seventeen year olds are
16:38
Speaker 2: gathering and Clustering's helpful to have appropriate supervision, especially if
16:44
Speaker 2: there might be, say alcohol.
16:49
Speaker 1: I was speaking with Doctor Ben Matthews' is a research
16:51
Speaker 1: professor in the School of Law at Queensland University of
16:54
Speaker 1: Technology and also the lead researcher on the Australian Child
16:57
Speaker 1: Maltreatment Study. When I'm listening to what you're saying here, Ben,
17:03
Speaker 1: I'm really concerned. I mean, we've got one in five kids.
17:07
Speaker 1: These numbers are big, these numbers are really substantial. But
17:09
Speaker 1: I don't want to tar all teenage boys, for example,
17:13
Speaker 1: with the label of potential child abuser potential molester. Having
17:21
Speaker 1: said that, given that the most common perpetrators child sex
17:23
Speaker 1: abuse in Australia are other under eighteen individuals who are
17:27
Speaker 1: known to the victims, what do you think the factors
17:31
Speaker 1: are that are contributing to this offending. Why is it
17:36
Speaker 1: that adolescents are I don't know if it's increasingly likely.
17:41
Speaker 1: We didn't mention the trend here, but why are adolescents
17:44
Speaker 1: so likely to offend sexually, particularly against their same age
17:49
Speaker 1: peers or those who are younger than them.
17:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of preparatory comments I'll give there. We
17:55
Speaker 2: did find that there has been an increase in recent
17:58
Speaker 2: years in offending by other adolescents aged under eighteen, that's true.
18:04
Speaker 2: And we did find that rate of say, eighteen percent
18:08
Speaker 2: of our sixteen to twenty four year old group had
18:10
Speaker 2: experienced sexual abuse by another adolescent. Okay, so about one
18:14
Speaker 2: in five had experienced that. The flip side of which
18:17
Speaker 2: is a stark story, but it's one that we all
18:21
Speaker 2: need to know. The flip side of that is that
18:24
Speaker 2: four in five had not experienced sexual abuse by another
18:29
Speaker 2: adolescent age under eighteen. Okay, So we don't want to
18:33
Speaker 2: demonize all adolescents. Absolutely, that is not the message. And
18:37
Speaker 2: we don't want to demonize all male adolescents either, that's
18:41
Speaker 2: not the message. At the same time, when we look
18:45
Speaker 2: at the group of adolescents who did sexual offend or
18:50
Speaker 2: based on our self report study by the victims who
18:54
Speaker 2: had experienced sexual abuse by other adolescents, the majority were
19:00
Speaker 2: male adolescents known to the child victim. Okay, and most
19:04
Speaker 2: of them had not either currently been the victim's boyfriend
19:10
Speaker 2: or had previously been the victim's boyfriend, but they were
19:14
Speaker 2: known to them. Okay.
19:15
Speaker 1: So this is a non romantic relationship. It's not like,
19:18
Speaker 1: in fact, they're in a relationship where there's some level
19:20
Speaker 1: of coercion. This is a we know each other and suddenly,
19:24
Speaker 1: exactly somebody is a victim of abuse.
19:27
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. Although there was we also did find an
19:31
Speaker 2: increase in sexual abuse of kids aged under eighteen by
19:36
Speaker 2: others under eighteen who were current boyfriends or former boyfriends.
19:40
Speaker 2: So we did find a little increase there too.
19:42
Speaker 1: So I guess the question is why in both cases why,
19:45
Speaker 1: And this.
19:46
Speaker 2: Is a really difficult question to answer. We did consider
19:49
Speaker 2: this as a team when we conducted our analysis and
19:53
Speaker 2: wrote about it in the journal article. And it's difficult
19:57
Speaker 2: to be sure of the precise reasons for this increase,
20:00
Speaker 2: but we did consider this and came up with a
20:03
Speaker 2: couple that we thought were likely. But we would really
20:06
Speaker 2: need further research on this. But one reason we identified
20:10
Speaker 2: is that there may be a perceived heightened societal pressure
20:14
Speaker 2: to have sexual experiences due to a generalized sexualization of adolescents,
20:20
Speaker 2: especially as expressed in media and social media these days.
20:24
Speaker 2: So one thing that has clearly demarketed the current generation
20:28
Speaker 2: of adolescents compared to say, those around say twenty years
20:32
Speaker 2: ago and forty years ago, is that we have this
20:34
Speaker 2: proliferation of social media, which can heighten social expectations and
20:41
Speaker 2: various perceptions.
20:44
Speaker 1: For example, so you see and hear about what all
20:46
Speaker 1: the cool kids are doing or what all the influencers
20:48
Speaker 1: are doing, and you see what's happening in the movies,
20:51
Speaker 1: and obviously, well, I want to talk to you about
20:52
Speaker 1: pornography separately, but yes, you've got all this kind of
20:55
Speaker 1: hyped up sexualization that adolescents are swimming.
20:59
Speaker 2: In exactly, and also depictions of masculinity or perceived masculinity
21:06
Speaker 2: and perceived successful masculinity and perceived strength. Okay, so we
21:12
Speaker 2: have certain kind of gender norms that can be portrayed
21:15
Speaker 2: in social media as well that might be even more
21:20
Speaker 2: pervasive and kind of powerful in conveying these messages which
21:25
Speaker 2: are obviously often inaccurate messages, but can still be influential
21:30
Speaker 2: on developing teenage minds. You also mentioned the influence or
21:37
Speaker 2: potential influence of pornography, and we gave this strong consideration
21:41
Speaker 2: as well. There's a lot of mixed scientific evidence about
21:46
Speaker 2: the impact of exposure to pornography on sexual violence, but
21:51
Speaker 2: it seems that the better evidence, or the best available
21:56
Speaker 2: evidence indicates that it's not necessarily exposure to any pornography
22:01
Speaker 2: or any explicit content that affects violent sexual behavior. But
22:05
Speaker 2: there is better evidence that exposure to violent pornography or
22:10
Speaker 2: explicit violent offending can have an effect. So we do think,
22:17
Speaker 2: or we would suspect that it's plausible that the heightened
22:23
Speaker 2: availability and access to online violent pornography may have had
22:30
Speaker 2: an impact on this increase in adolescent offending in recent
22:35
Speaker 2: years too. That's partly to do with the creation of
22:38
Speaker 2: gendered norms, expectations, senses of sexual entitlement, a feeling or
22:45
Speaker 2: a lack of respect for girls and young women, and
22:50
Speaker 2: a lack of gender equality. Generally, those types of attitudes
22:55
Speaker 2: and dispositions we know are likely to increase sexually aggressive behavior.
23:04
Speaker 2: In contrast, things like a lack of a sense of
23:07
Speaker 2: sexual entitlement, empathy towards others, impulse control. These are the
23:14
Speaker 2: types of things, respect, empathy, gender equality that really matter
23:19
Speaker 2: in producing healthy human beings and people who don't inflict
23:23
Speaker 2: violence and sexual violence on others.
23:25
Speaker 1: But I want to take this conversation in a slightly
23:27
Speaker 1: different direction. Well, actually I want to stick with the
23:30
Speaker 1: pornography side of things for just a moment. It's such
23:32
Speaker 1: a provocative and rightly well discussed area. Last year, towards
23:38
Speaker 1: the end of the year, the Australian Federal Government vetoed
23:41
Speaker 1: submissions from the Safety Commissioner Julian mcgrant to develop an
23:45
Speaker 1: age verification system for explicit online content. In other words,
23:49
Speaker 1: a way of really making sure that access to explicit
23:52
Speaker 1: content online pornographic content online is only available for people
23:56
Speaker 1: who are eighteen plus or very savvy teenagers who have
23:59
Speaker 1: done a work around. But they're going to have to
24:00
Speaker 1: work really hard to get there. To what extent do
24:04
Speaker 1: you think that having this kind of government intervention had
24:08
Speaker 1: the government said yes to it, What might that age
24:11
Speaker 1: verification system do in terms of being helpful in reducing
24:15
Speaker 1: the kind of abuse that you've been studying?
24:18
Speaker 2: Well, justin this is a great question in a very
24:22
Speaker 2: complex area, and it's tough to be definitive about this
24:27
Speaker 2: because so much depends on what what are the exact
24:30
Speaker 2: parameters we're talking about here? How do you define explicit material?
24:35
Speaker 2: Which specific types are you planning on applying this age
24:42
Speaker 2: verification threshold? For what I just referred to earlier, is
24:48
Speaker 2: the best evidence in the field indicates that certain types
24:51
Speaker 2: of violent pornography can tend to have an impact on
24:57
Speaker 2: behavior and attitudes. Exposure to other types of explicit material
25:05
Speaker 2: may not, or there's no sufficient or compelling evidence to
25:09
Speaker 2: indicate that it does.
25:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess you've also got issues of causation, right,
25:12
Speaker 1: So people who are more likely to be offenders than
25:15
Speaker 1: going to seek out that material. So therefore is it
25:17
Speaker 1: a personality attribute or is it the content that they've
25:20
Speaker 1: been consuming. It's really hard to do ethical studies with teenager.
25:25
Speaker 2: Of course, there's also that sequencing that temporal sequencing issue
25:29
Speaker 2: and issues of correlation, causation, et cetera. What I would
25:34
Speaker 2: think is much more important, though, is to accelerate public
25:40
Speaker 2: health efforts about healthy sexual relationships and education of kids
25:45
Speaker 2: in schools and supporting parents to implement healthy sexual relationships
25:53
Speaker 2: education of their own kids in the home, so that
25:56
Speaker 2: we have a parallel approach to this to help our
26:01
Speaker 2: kids develop healthy sexual and healthy relational boundaries and attributes
26:07
Speaker 2: within themselves. That would be much more important, much more
26:11
Speaker 2: effective in continuing to in arresting this increase in adolescent
26:17
Speaker 2: sexual offending and in decreasing it in future generations. That's
26:22
Speaker 2: what's the most important.
26:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Chanelle contos teachers consent type of internationally at
26:28
Speaker 1: home and at school, a dual approach. Okay, well, I
26:31
Speaker 1: guess that feeds into my final question. This is a
26:34
Speaker 1: podcast that's typically designed for the time poor parents who
26:36
Speaker 1: just wants answers. Now, we've obviously gone a lot deeper
26:38
Speaker 1: on a very sensitive topic today than we usually do
26:42
Speaker 1: in this podcast, but I'd love to get really practical
26:45
Speaker 1: in wrapping things up. This is a conversation's obviously vital
26:50
Speaker 1: to our children's safety and their health and their well being.
26:53
Speaker 1: If you were to outline the three most important things
26:56
Speaker 1: that you think parents should do with this knowledge, what
27:01
Speaker 1: would they be?
27:02
Speaker 2: This is the million dollar question, isn't it. But the
27:04
Speaker 2: first thing I would say is that the best thing
27:06
Speaker 2: we can do as a society and the best thing
27:08
Speaker 2: parents can do, is to help develop in your kids
27:12
Speaker 2: the skills and dispositions that promote healthy sexual development and
27:16
Speaker 2: healthy sexual behavior towards themselves and others, and that minimize
27:21
Speaker 2: the attributes that contribute to sexual violence. This applies especially
27:25
Speaker 2: to boys, but also to girls. So one of the
27:28
Speaker 2: things that parents can best do is to educate their
27:31
Speaker 2: kids about their bodies, about sex, about healthy sexual development,
27:35
Speaker 2: healthy relationships with others and themselves, and about gender equality.
27:40
Speaker 2: A second thing I would say is to develop relationships
27:43
Speaker 2: with your kids that you can have ongoing conversations, open
27:47
Speaker 2: conversations about sex and relationships and not silence this, not
27:51
Speaker 2: leave kids to their own devices and not having good
27:57
Speaker 2: model behavior and receiving good messages. And the third thing
28:01
Speaker 2: I think is that it's really important to help kids
28:03
Speaker 2: and especially boys, to develop empathy towards others and understanding
28:09
Speaker 2: that they're not entitled ever to sex with others, that
28:12
Speaker 2: sets should only ever happen with full consent, and that
28:16
Speaker 2: it's a healthy, normal, natural part of life that can
28:19
Speaker 2: be engaged in and enjoyed under the right circumstances. All
28:24
Speaker 2: of those things together will provide us with a lot
28:28
Speaker 2: of good messages and hopefully help to produce good young
28:33
Speaker 2: people moving forward.
28:34
Speaker 1: My definition of consent at a practical level when I'm
28:37
Speaker 1: talking to my kids or our lessons generally, is if
28:40
Speaker 1: we're both excited about it, then it's probably going to
28:43
Speaker 1: be okay. But if there's anyone who's not excited about it,
28:46
Speaker 1: we could have a problem because you wake up the
28:48
Speaker 1: next day and there's regret and pain and so on,
28:52
Speaker 1: and suddenly it doesn't feel quite so consensual. Doctor Ben
28:56
Speaker 1: Matthews is a research professor in the School of Law
28:58
Speaker 1: at Queensland University of Technol in Brisbane and also the
29:02
Speaker 1: lead researcher on the Istralian Child Male Treatment Study. Been
29:05
Speaker 1: such a vital, important conversation. Thank you so much for
29:08
Speaker 1: being so generous with your time, and I've been really
29:10
Speaker 1: challenging to squeeze this in, but such an important discussion
29:14
Speaker 1: and really appreciate your joining me.
29:15
Speaker 2: Thanks justin my pleasure, Happy to talk another time.
29:18
Speaker 1: The Happy Family's podcast is produced audio by Justin Roland,
29:22
Speaker 1: video by Jet Hatchard. Our executive producer is Craig Bruce.
29:26
Speaker 1: If this has sparked anything for you and you or
29:30
Speaker 1: your family need help, please speak to a mental health
29:34
Speaker 1: professional or at least go and see your GP and
29:37
Speaker 1: get some advice on next steps. Sometimes you may even
29:40
Speaker 1: need to speak to law enforcement depending on the circumstances,
29:43
Speaker 1: so please be discerning and who you speak to get
29:46
Speaker 1: the help that you need. Hopefully we can talk to
29:48
Speaker 1: Ben again about some more findings from the Australian Child
29:51
Speaker 1: My Treatment Study. It's such an important topic for now though.
29:53
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for watching, thank you so much
29:55
Speaker 1: for listening, and if you'd like more information about what
29:58
Speaker 1: we've talked about, check out the Australian Child My Treatment
30:01
Speaker 1: Study online or visit Happy Families dot com dot au