Caroline Overington of The Australian, has today written on Innocent Seduction. An excellent article that offers a balanced argument on the alleged sexualisation and exploitation of children through the marketing and advertising of designer children’s wear, I was saddened to read that giant retailer, David Jones, has entered Litigious Street. Demanding that references to their company be removed from an Australian Institute research paper entitled, Corporate Paedophillia (see Revealing Children’s Fashion), David Jones’ CEO has called in the legal guns to support their “reputation for high-quality apparel and corporate decency.”

It would appear that the research report, “Corporate Pedophilia”, has upset many fashion brand labels. Add to this, everyday parents who view that the author of Corporate Pedophilia is way off beam. One father was quoted in Overington’s article as saying that, "Parents are doting on their kids. Children are saturated with love and affection and care."

This may be the case for many families. Certainly, my children are loved and protected as are the children of the vast majority of people that I am friends with. However, the reality is that the rates of child sexual assault remain high and eighty-five percent of child sexual assault is perpetrated by somebody well known to the child. While it is not the corporate entities that are sexually abusing these children, their marketing and advertising may well become skewed in the minds of a voyeuristic child abuser – a person who has access to innocent children, a person who may well collect and read advertising from their mail box and then carries out their perverted thoughts on the children in the home.

Discourse is needed around this. It is the responsibility of all of us to stop pedophilia. Child sexual abuse is an emotive topic and the divide between the believers and those unable to believe is wide. Somehow, we’ve got to find a common ground, a place where both parties can understand what the other is saying.

Many years ago I watched a Dave Allen skit on a scantily clad woman rubbing herself all over a car. The skit was a take off, of a car marketing add. Dave’s punch line was, “Buy this car and you’ll be fuc*ed!” That one line has stayed with me for twenty years. It assisted me to become highly sensitive to the use of sex or sexualised behaviour in marketing. Conversely, advertising that talks directly to pedophiles, telling them that what they are doing is wrong, unacceptable but that there is help for them, would also work on me. I would support that corporate entity in their delivery of exceptional corporate responsible.

If one in three adults have reported in survey that they were sexually abused as children, then this is a high number of potential children’s fashion label buyers, or non buyers. Already I won’t purchase several brands of clothing because the companies openly flaunt sex to sell their product. How many more people are there in the world like me? David Jones may well be concerned that they have been slighted as being non-protective, but it is their reaction that has concerned me to the point that they may well become one of those shops I stop shopping at. They are failing to hear the essence behind the report and have instead personalised it. However, if David Jones displayed corporate responsibility toward ending child sexual abuse, perhaps even donating to treatment programs for sexual offenders, then I would be likely to purchase all of my clothes there. If this was a similar case for the one in three prevalence statistic of people who have claimed sexual abuse then that is a massive increase in potential customers to David Jones or any other fashion label/house.

Please, it is time to end child sexual abuse. To the corporates, we need your help. To everyone else, the corporates that are displaying recognition and action for ending child sexual abuse need our support.

Yet another Australian politician falls from grace because he was caught engaging in unwanted sexualized behaviour toward a young person (alleged sexually harassing text messages to an 18-year-old female). It bothers me greatly that our taxes are not only paying the wages of these perpetrating people, but also that while they engage in unacceptable behaviours, they are tasked with being representative of their electorates or portfolios.

Does being representative of an electorate or portfolio mean that the majority of people in Australia also engage in sexually exploitative or abusive behaviours? On the face of it, it would appear so. The recent and all too regular media surrounding unacceptable sexualized behaviour from politicians makes it sound as though far too many top shelf Australian Civil Servants engage in sexually abusive behaviour. There have been so many public figures under scrutiny for perpetrating a range of personal abuses against others, if they are representative of us, what is happening in non public life?

These perpetrating people have come under the media spot light only because they have been caught. Some have been caught through extensive investigations and some have been caught and found guilty following a single disclosure from a person affected. Although we could argue that it is happening too frequently and that non public life reflects public office, we could also consider that more people than ever before are finally speaking out against abuse perpetrated by a few.

If victims are speaking out now, it is about time. No longer are people disempowered and scared of abusers, threats or deviant behaviours perpetrated by people in positions of authority. No longer will men, women or children be sucked into the rotting hole of blackness that some public figures attempt to keep their victims in. Ordinary people are speaking up, ordinary people are recognizing their own power, their own worth and their own value to our society. Ordinary people are saying: NO way. WE will not tolerate abuse.

Transparency in governance has long been called for. If you do the wrong thing in office, you will be called to task publicly. Whereas once it was referred to as airing dirty laundry in public, it now appears to have become accepted practice that to kill the bugs that breed in dirty laundry, bright sunlight and winds of change are mandatory and sanctioned. What a wonderful sea change to be a part of and thank you to those in office that have fought hard for it.

If Government is for the people, by the people, then our Australian people are speaking against the abuse perpetrated on our children and young people by people in civil positions of authority.

While not all politicians act in such devious or perverted ways, if you are a politician who is hiding your sexually exploitative behaviour, I’d be worried. It would seem the Australian public has had enough and that the power of the media is on their side.

If you have even been abused by a politician or anyone else, please, report it. End sexual abuse: talk about it and take the power away from the perpetrators.

My daughter and I have decided to no longer post to her blog site: Toys, books & games protect kids. Child Protection: Serious Business has by far the greatest amount of traffic and it would appear the most sensible and protective thing to do to collate all protective information in the one spot.

Therefore, I am moving the entries about my children's book, Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast: Complete, over to this site so that more people have an opportunity to print either chapters or the entire book as a resource to assist them in keeping their children safe.

This is a copy of the final post about Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast:

The entire book, Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast: A Chapter Each Day, has now been posted, chapter by chapter, to Toys, Books, Games Protect Kids. I do hope that you enjoyed it and I would love to hear some feedback. Just so that the contents are all on a single page, indexed links appear below.

A Dream Introduction
Bit 1. Tart Marmalade or Sweet Caramel
Bit 2. Caramel-Brown Toilet Sausages and Poisoned Worm Jelly
Bit 3. Leaping Tasmanian Devil in Sour Lime Sauce
Bit 4. Catmando and Reef Knots.
Bit 5. Bitssy Gets it Good!
Bit 6. Clown Fish Won't Survive in Limejuice.
Bit 7. The Mellow Yellow Prophecy.
Bit 8. Poison Snake Catches a Rat on the Front Verandah
Bit 9. Snot Nice
Bit 10. Hot Toast with Vegemite.
Bit 11. Off Caramel Smells Like Rotting Lime.
Bit 12. A Dog's Body
Bit 13. The Goodbye Van.
Bit 14. Caramel on Toast.
Bit 15. The Final Dreaming.
Eulogy.

Past head of the now defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Jeff Clarke, is guilty of leading two pack rapes and has been ordered to pay $20,000.00 in damages to his victim.

The rapes occurred in 1971, 35 years ago. Australia has no statute of limitations on sexual assaults and the victim did not come forward until Mr Clarke’s cousin disclosed that Mr Clarke had raped her when she was a teenager.

In a jubilant moment, the once victim encouraged other victims of childhood sexual assault to gain strength from the verdict. "Truth's out, the reality's out," she said. "There's a lot of people out there who have been waiting on this outcome ... they can do it, they've got power."

Sexual Assault and Rape are not about sex: they are power crimes. Designed to bring pleasure only to the attacker and degradation, violation and fear to the victim, sexual assaults and rapes will remain unchallenged until victims start taking their power back and the community starts listening.

Mr Clarke’s abusive behaviour has not occurred in a vacuum. He has a long history of being in trouble with authorities.

· 1952: Geoff Clark born to Aboriginal mother and father of Scottish descent. Raised by his grandmother Alice.
· 1967: First conviction for robbery in company, receiving, housebreaking and stealing; gets two years' probation.
· 1970: Sentenced to 12 months in youth training centre for assault, serves eight months.
· 1971: In March and April leads two pack rapes against Carol Anne Stingel.
· 1996: Elected in December to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission board after rising through ranks of Aboriginal activists in Victoria.
· 1999: Becomes first elected chairman of ATSIC in December.
· 2000: Cousin Joanne McGuinness alleges Clark raped her in 1981 when she was 18. Insufficient evidence to send case to trial.
· 2001: The Age publishes claims Clark raped four women in the 1970s and '80s.
· March 2002: Clark guest of honour at the Lodge, Canberra.
· August 2002: Stingel files statement of claim alleging Clark raped her when she was16.
· December 2002: Clark and "Sugar" Ray Robinson are re-elected ATSIC chairman and deputy chairman, despite both facing serious legal scrutiny.
· February 2003: The Australian reveals ATSIC has agreed in principle to allocate $45,000 for Clark to fight criminal charges arising from a pub brawl.
· March 2003: The Australian reveals Clark took his wife, Trudy, on a $31,000 taxpayer-funded trip to Ireland because "she deserved a break".
· March 2003: Clark convicted in Warrnambool magistrates court on two criminal charges arising from a pub brawl on May 1, 2002. He appeals and is partially successful.
· April 2003: Then indigenous affairs minister Philip Ruddock sets the stage for using the federal budget to strip ATSIC of control of its $1.2 billion budget.
· April 2003: McGuinness begins civil action against Clark.
· July 2003: Ruddock sends Clark a letter asking him to show cause why he should not be removed for misleading the minister and bringing the national indigenous body into disrepute.
· August 2003: Clark handed suspension notice while attending ATSIC meeting in Darwin.
· February 2004: Victorian judge John Hanlon finds Clark led two pack rapes against a woman 33 years ago. The decision is overturned on appeal in May 2005 and the judge is criticised for his ruling.
· 2004: John Howard announces abolition of ATSIC.
· 2006: High Court gives Stingel the right to bring her case before a jury.
· January 31, 2007: Victorian County Court jury finds Clark raped Stingel.
Stuart Rintoul. The Australian, Feb 01, 2007

Until we report all crimes and stop accepting sexual assaults as normal male behaviour, we will be unable to adequately profile the escalation of criminal behaviours. It is well supported that sexual deviance, particularly adolescence sexual deviance, often follows a pattern of escalation. Reporting incidents as they occur allows for healing and prevention.

A compensation payout to victims of assaults does little to prevent crime from occurring again. It is time for our world to be proactive in protecting our children while they are children. In the words of Jeff Clarke’s victim: you’ve “got power.”

This world is full of men and women who have long carried the guilt and burden of having been assaulted as children. The crime is not theirs. The crime belongs to the perpetrators, those people who often go unchecked and move on to increasingly violent crimes because few people talk about, or report, sexual assault when it occurs.

It’s time to talk. Were you sexually assaulted as a child and never told anyone? Leave an anonymous comment and give strength to yourself and others not yet brave enough to talk about what happened to them.

For those interested in follow up reading or evidenced based interventions for working with children who sexually offend, here’s an excellent Literature Review compiled by the Australian Childhood Foundation: Children who engage in Problem Sexual Behaviours: Context Characteristics and Treatment.