Today……
It’s been a year since this site was created last August and during this time many changes have taken place in my life and in my family’s life, and many small battles have been fought, and even more preparations have been made for future battles. Many memories have been recorded, processed and re-processed and deeper levels of understanding have been reached. These processes have all been facilitated by this site, which has greatly contributed to my breaking the silence towards safety, and more importantly, has allowed me to recognize the importance of breaking the silence and the power of considered self-exposure. It has further allowed my readings, knowledge, experience, art work, battles and interests to come together in a way I had never anticipated a year ago. Actually, the site has evolved into an online project, a venue for my art journal pages, essays, texts and much more. It has also given me the opportunity to present and refer to data and material concerning trauma, art, memory, neuroscience, (art) therapy, healing, advocacy and activism, and has enabled me to become acquainted with the work of many individuals around the world working against abuse and violation of rights and towards healing various forms of trauma in multiple ways and in diverse contexts. Therefore, I would like to thank all those people, survivors and professionals in the field, whose work I have referred to and whose work has assisted me and provided inspiration and new knowledge.
Secondly, today I’d like to suggest a book I read a few days ago, in one sitting, written by Hetty Johnston – In the Best Interests of the Child (2004). Hetty Johnston was a former businesswoman and Queensland state leader of the Australian Democrats with ambitions for a federal seat when her life changed dramatically and permanently in 1996 when she discovered that her seven year old daughter had been sexually abused. She started a life long campaign with her husband to allow abuse survivors to be heard so that potential victims could be warned because she strongly believed that silence, secrecy and shame is what enabled perpetrators to continue. She used the campaigning skills and experience she had initially developed while fighting for environmental issues (the protection of the koala’s habitat) and she became a committed advocate for child protection. Hetty Johnston initially founded the People’s Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse in 2000, which changed its name to Bravehearts in 2001. Bravehearts is a Queensland based child protection group, which employs people in 10 offices in four states and Johnston estimates that over the years, they have provided face-to-face support/ counselling to 250,000 child sexual assault survivors. In her autobiographical book she describes Bravehearts as ‘a vehicle to raise awareness, to protect kids, to be the voice of the survivor, to challenge the status quo and change the way things are done’. The organisation is involved in counselling and therapy, research, developing policy and lobbying for legislative reform. She claims that ‘the extent of child sexual assault in the community is staggering. One in five children are sexually assaulted in Australia before they turn 18 – 59, 000 children every year’. She has fought to change laws and has won legislative reform in areas of sentencing and policy and has driven a governor general to resign over his failure to confront abuse within the Anglican Church. Specifically, in 2001, she spearheaded a campaign to force governor general Peter Hollingworth to resign after court revelations that he had failed to act despite being aware of allegations of abuse at an Anglican school when he was Archbishop of Brisbane. Prime Minister John Howard, at the time, who had appointed Dr Hollingworth, rejected a broad inquiry, but the event raised a lot of public debate over these issues. Hetty Johnston writes ‘He (Hollingworth) had a clear choice to protect the children or to protect the institution and its money. The money or the child? To his eternal shame he chose the money, leaving the child to wilt on the vine of denial and humiliation’. In 1997 Hetty Johnston organised the first annual White Balloon Day – now a national event. In her book In the Best Interests of the Child she writes ‘and with each White Balloon Day came more and more disclosures of child sexual assault to authorities and to our group’ and ‘Queensland Police noted that White Balloon Day 1999 was defined as the prime motivator behind an astounding 51.4 % increase in disclosures’. She developed Loud and Clear, a publication that contains information about the criminal justice system for adult survivors of childhood sexual assault and those who support them, the Sexual Assault Disclosure Scheme (SADS) and the child protection CD Ditto’s Keep Safe Adventure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgnlobZlHg8
Moreover, she describes her long wished and long awaited reunion with her first daughter, which had been given up for adoption during her adolescence. She writes ‘the love I felt for her was ingrained in me during my pregnancy and cemented at the time of her birth’ (2004). Finally, Hetty Johnston is the recipient of many awards for her work, such as, the two Australian Lawyers Alliance Civil Justice Awards (2003, 2004) and was recognised as one of approximately 70 outstanding leaders throughout the world in 2009, etc, etc.
Tonya Kyriazis-Alexandri, August 15th, 2014
Extracts from Hetty Johnston’s book In the Best Interests of the Child
‘I didn’t realise how desolate Australia was, how dry and full of nothingness. The sameness and stillness of the scorched landscape was interrupted only occasionally by a moving camel, emu or kangaroo. Mile after mile of nothing, just more and more of the same nothing. I had never seen anything like it. It was spectacular’.
‘Even now this wave of emotion is difficult to explain to those who have not experienced it. From the female perspective, love between a mother and her child is all powerful-stronger than anything else on earth. Until you have a child, I’m not sure you can ever know the strength and depth of this core emotion which I believe lies at the nucleus of our universe’.
‘Most people, and therefore, most independent authorities want to keep their jobs so they are necessarily careful, constrained and politically correct in their public commentary and reporting……….. Think about it for a moment. Here in Queensland in January 2004, the department entrusted with the care of children was found to be dysfunctional, dangerous and ineffective and was shut down. Yet the person who spoke out about it, the organisation that exposed the truth was not their watchdog, the Independent Commission for Children, nor was it the minister-it was a brave victim, an Aboriginal agency worker and Bravehearts’.
‘This time it would be different the leaked documents would provide the written proof that Bravehearts needed to demonstrate just how ineffective, under resourced and down right dangerous the Queensland Department of Family Services really was. In using the department’s own documents, admissions and reports, the children would speak through the government’s own pen. This was to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to expose the truth and do all we could to ensure it never happened again’.
‘The river was running quietly. The sound of the water trickling over the rocks and meandering past the fallen trees is so therapeutic. All kinds of insects hover over the water around here, strange looking things teasing the fish beneath that were than jumping from the water as if to tease us…. Ian baited up rods while I sat on our private river bank with my wine glass in one hand, the rod in the other, simply taking in scenery and the serenity’.
Read more facts and statistics from Australia in the STATISTICS part of this site
Προσοχή
Θα παρακαλούσα όσους κάνουν αναφορά σε αποσπάσματα κειμένων αυτής της ιστοσελίδας ή σε οποιοδήποτε άλλο υλικό, είτε αυτό είναι δικό μου είτε άλλων, οι αναφορές αυτές να είναι ακριβείς και όχι παραποιημένες. Επιπλέον είναι δεοντολογικό να αναφέρουν το όνομα του δημιουργού και την ημερομηνία δημιουργίας ή γραφής, όπως είθισται και είναι νόμιμο. Την αφορμή για αυτήν την παρατήρηση μου την έδωσε η ανάρτηση του χρήστη ή της χρήστριας isotita wordpress στις 22/07/2014 στον ιστότοπο gather8.com/poster/view/4723.
First there was the taking, then there was the breaking