02Jun17c Lynley Hood is a force to be tapped into

Lynley Hood, of Dunedin, is the author of A City Possessed: The
Christchurch Civic Crèche Case.

Wednesday, 29-May 2002


***** A CITY POSSESSED is now available on amazon.com *****

http://www.lynleyhood.org/ 

Demonising any class of people as devoid of humanity and beyond redemption
is wrong, writes Dunedin author LYNLEY HOOD. There are dangers in the
parallels between the Christchurch Civic Crèche case and the recent
conviction of Raymond White that we ignore at our peril.

Demonising any class of people is wrong

T HE willingness of some our more righteous citizens to make a scapegoat of
Raymond White calls to mind a question that exercised me throughout my
seven-year study of the Christchurch Civic Crèche case: when a spark of
outrage is tossed into an already-anxious community, how do you stop it
setting off a firestorm?

However you look at it, the civic crèche case was a disaster. It began with
the ambiguous comment of a 3-year-old boy, and ended with a bitterly
divided city, scores of families thrown into turmoil, 12 child care workers
stripped of their jobs and their previously unblemished reputations, four
workers arrested and discharged, and one (Peter Ellis) convicted and
sentenced to 10 years in jail. Whether Ellis was guilty or innocent, that
was too high a price to pay.

There are lessons to be learnt from the crèche case that we ignore at our
peril. These relate to the harm being inflicted on our society by current
campaigns to protect children from vaguely defined sexual dangers by
criminalising and scapegoating a wide range of people and behaviours. Such
campaigns ignore the realities of childhood and adolescent sexuality. They
distract us from serious problems related to the health, education and
welfare of children. They erode essential freedoms for everybody.

But the hysteria surrounding the issue is so pervasive that anyone who
suggests more thoughtful discussion risks being branded a child abuser.

To truly protect children, and to empower them to be themselves, we must
insist on a more sensible and compassionate approach. In particular, we
need to consider the following points:


Recent child sex abuse campaigns make little or no distinction among
diverse behaviours and circumstances. Any sex equals violence. Anyone under
the age of 17 is a "child". The brutal sexual violation of a 5-year-old and
an affair between a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old boy are clearly
very different cases, yet both are portrayed as rape by law and in the media.

Demonising any class of people as devoid of humanity and beyond redemption
is wrong. Currently any transgressor of under-age sex rules is branded a
"sexual predator", even when no violence or force is alleged, and even when
the young person is a month or a day shy of the legal age of consent. In
addition, society's fears and hatred of homosexuality often leads to a
scapegoating of gay people, falsely stereotyping them as child molesters.
Demonisation is destructive even when applied to violent offenders. Those
who commit truly violent crimes do not come out of a vacuum. They come out
of our communities and families. To view dangerous offenders as totally
"other" than us prevents us getting to the roots of such crimes. Permanent
stigmatisation not only prevents rehabilitation, it signals the breakdown
of civil society.


The battle cry "protect the children" has been used to dramatically expand
coercive state power. Currently, ACC-funded therapists use counselling
techniques that are known to encourage false memories of sexual abuse; CYFS
interviewers use investigative techniques that cannot distinguish between
true and false allegations; prosecutors use quackery masked as "expert
psychological evidence" to encourage juries to convict on unreliable
evidence. Despite repeated calls from legal authorities and the public to
address these problems, the Government has refused to do so.

The power and capriciousness of the laws and attitudes wrought by these
campaigns have put up a destructive barrier between adults and children.
Currently, caring adults may reasonably fear than any affection will be
branded as abuse. This fear means that adults - whether parents, teachers
or strangers - often withhold that which all children need most: affection,
respect and attention.
Many of these concerns have surfaced in the debate surrounding the Raymond
White case. In so far as they affect the relationships between all adults
and all children, they affect us all. None the less, it is all too easy for
those of us who do not know or care about White to remain silent at this
time.

Like Peter Ellis, Raymond White is an easy target. From the safety of our
comfort zones, it is easy to persuade ourselves (with appropriate
expressions of regret) that if the price of peace in our city is that we
must allow our fellow citizens to pillory a single man with a tarnished
reputation, then so be it. But the history of the Christchurch Civic Crèche
case shows that sacrificing even one individual to the outraged minority
would be a terrible mistake, because a vengeful few with the smell of human
sacrifice in their nostrils can become a mob out of control.

Regardless of what we think of Raymond White, if we want to live in
community that values compassion over cruelty, tolerance over prejudice,
forgiveness over vengeance, love over hatred; and if we want to dowse the
flames of panic before they explode into a conflagration that consumes our
city - then our message to the small-minded bigots who seek to pillory
Raymond White must be: call off the lynch mob.



'Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to
conscience, above all liberties.'
John Milton


- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------