Dr Liz Gordon: Sexual abuse and sexual violence
Avid readers will have picked up last week that I am currently assisting Robyn Hewland, early woman psychiatrist, to write her memoirs. Last week I wrote about equality for women and the #MeToo movement. This week I want to look at sexual abuse and sexual violence.
Before I get shouted at, I want to confirm that most men enjoy loving, warm and consensual sex with partners, whether casual encounters or enduring relationships. The men I am referring to here are a small proportion of the population, although not small enough as they do significant damage. They are ‘deviant’, if you like, although I do not like the term.
The issue arose in relation to the memoirs because Robyn was a part time psychiatrist for the Department of Social Welfare, including their Christchurch children’s homes, community homes, assessments of families etc in the 1970s to the early 1990s.
We now know, due to the current Royal Commission, that sexual abuse by caregivers and staff was widespread at that time. In my interviews with her, I have been asking “did you know?”, and then, with the first question answered “NO”, then “how did you not know?”.
The answers are complex, I guess, but boil down to basic naivety, perhaps a faith in authority figures and a belief that strangers were the only threat to children. There was certainly the view that men would look after their families, not rape, beat or murder them. It was not until the 1980s that such behaviour was opened up to public view, due to organisations such as Rape Crisis and the Mental Health Foundation who first brought sexual abuse into the public view here.
As I wrote last week, the #MeToo movement may not be doing much for equal pay and improving the position of women, but it has certainly brought to the fore the way that sex, power and control have affected, and still affect, women’s lives. While what is happening may shatter some illusions, in the longer term we could, as a society, prevent sexual abuse through education and support for victims.
I want to talk about the unnamed person (no, I don’t know why he has name suppression – the reason is also suppressed) on trial currently for killing Grace Millane. From the evidence presented to date, it seems that he has some extremely strange views about sex.
I am talking here both about Grace, but more particularly about the witness who testified that he nearly choked her while she was giving him oral sex. Apart from the fact that the evidence suggested she barely escaped with her life, there is something particular creepy about his control of her body in that way.
I think that her evidence, and also his next-day Tinder date where he ‘tried out’ his explanation of accidental death or manslaughter will prove important in the outcome. I don’t want to say more at the moment as the trial is ongoing.
Robyn commented to me that she had never heard the term ‘enjoying rough sex’ before, and actually neither have I. Frankly, it sounds very much like an older view put forward by some that women like to be raped, or the even older one that no really means yes. Because the protagonist, the violent one, will almost by necessity be the man, won’t it? The fact that it all seems to be about choking, which appears to be very much on the rise, is highly disturbing too. Perhaps I should say it out loud: choking people is dangerous and at least highly unpleasant. No-one wants to be choked, ever.
The stories coming out of the Royal Commission justify the many calls there have been for this inquiry. Hundreds, probably thousands, of women and men living today have been subjected to sexual abuse from the very institutions set up to help them.
The pipeline from care to prison is peppered with the victims of abuse in care. First, the children were the victims. Then, they were punished for their behaviour and inability to express their victimhood. Then, they were shoved into further institutional care – the prisons, the mental health facilities – where they were further blamed and punished for not being able to function adequately in society. Some of them became abusers themselves in the next generation. Some will never leave institutional care.
It appears we have an epidemic in New Zealand, largely hidden but going back two or three generations, with most perpetrators never coming to justice. Even now, only a tiny proportion of sex crimes ever get to court.
Whether all this current publicity about the convergence of sex, violence and power, and the silencing of victims through fear or even death, will lead to long-term change, remains to be seen. The Loves-Me-Not programme in schools, the brainchild of Lesley Elliott, aims to help senior students explore positive relationships and especially identify potentially abusive ones. For example, it teaches that a boy might not be possessive out of caring, but because of the need to control. “Oh, isn’t he sweet, he never lets her out of his sight!” should be seen as a warning, not an expression of love. But that programme does not run in all schools.
We need to go for the gold standard: No more sexual abuse. No more sexual violence. FFS… Choking is banned! Let’s make sure our learnings from current events make a difference for the future.
Dr Liz Gordon is a researcher and a barrister, with interests in destroying neo-liberalism in all its forms and moving towards a socially just society. She usually blogs on justice, social welfare and education topics.
There is also the con current NZ murder case that has not been getting much attention in Auckland, (surprise, surprise with MSM when there are fake dog stories to click bait), by the doctor, Venod Skantha, who is accused of murdering a teenager by stabbing her in the vocal cords so she would not scream and then leaving her to bleed out.
The doctors defence is that his friend who was ordered to clean up the shoes (who is a teenage registered sex offender) did it and that the blood on his shoes was planted on him that – oh and that it was coincidental that the doctor burned his clothes that day with an ex girlfriend and roasted marshmallows over the ashes!
Seriously what sort of country is this, where a doctor working in our hospitals hang out with registered sex offenders and have inappropriate txts with teenage girls while lying about their dead mothers who turn out to be very much alive and are also on trial for murder!
Both the Millane and this case involve very bizarre male entitled behaviour!
But sexual crimes are often about power and control issues and very occasionally women can also offenders.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/from-very-brief-relationship-to-9000-texts-and-stalking-charges-20190204-p50vk8.html
Doctor pleads guilty to sending 9,000 threatening texts to ex-Tinder date
https://thecaliforniasun.com/doctor-pleads-guilty-to-sending-9000-threatening-texts-to-ex-tinder-date/
Time the med school and other government departments, makes sure there is psychological testing to look for deception, sexual issues, before these doctors and public figures are let loose on the public and that students with inappropriate views take the place of students gaining places who have major deception or sexual issues.
Apparently Otago Uni are investigating 15 med students who lied about overseas placements to go on holiday.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/otago-uni-finds-15-med-students-lied-overseas-placements-go-holiday
I suggest all government paid CEO’s, and executives MP’s are tested before being appointed to roles and very hard to get into student places, like med school have phycology testing as part of their application to get into med school, likewise law school – since they have had their own sexual harassment scandals!
On a related note to gender based crimes….
Another thing I notice is that woman are more likely to be prosecuted when they allegedly abuse positions of power for small amount of money, but men get a free ride from prosecution for much higher sums! Old boys club!!!!
Serious Fraud Office sends terrible message over former Waikato DHB CEO’s $200k ripoff
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/07/05/dave-macpherson-serious-fraud-office-sends-terrible-message-over-former-waikato-dhb-ceos-200k-ripoff/
this woman is in front of the courts…
Alleged child abuse charity fraudster a former Oranga Tamariki worker
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/117098368/alleged-child-abuse-charity-fraudster-a-former-oranga-tamariki-worker
“It’s alleged a payment of $1530 made to CAPA for marshalling duties at a Taupō Ironman event was paid directly into her personal bank account, and that she also withdrew $1400 in cash from a bank account set up for CAPA.
The Crown allege that cash was used to buy her husband a present.
Livingstone sought to get a charge of causing harm by posting digital communication dismissed. “
I just fear that my description will repeat the very act that I wish to criticise. Just as an example if I was to criticise the gender pay gap I would claim that if woman was to experience the full force of capitalism then 90% would go bankrupt with in 90 days losing 90% of there money. There is an unwillingness to match our own honour with the horror of atrocities. And each time to prove my point I must get more and more graphic. The pointlessness of my display of intervention about the woman’s pay gap by subjecting readers to the unfair group images or male dominance is where the logic is totally rejected.
I think this line of questions confronts politically correct wokeness. I am rejected and considered extremely dangerous on the level of Hitler. In order to grasp sexual violence people have to be shocked. If we constrain ourselves to technical distractions we will do exactly the same as those who refer to the gender pay gap as an unobtainable illusion or much worse we will refer to rape as an illusion if it does not shock the audience.
Ignoring the political dimension, as if anyone could be aroused by images of a dying girl. What this shows is not sexual arousal but an awareness of the war on woman. My problem with the reaction is that it may be more concerned with policing language and thought than to do anything to fix the problem. Psychiatrists speak of triggering words, safe spaces, micro aggression and privilege while not having to give up anything. People in the humanities can not even tolerate someone who looks at the world differently with out resorting to calling them homophobe or transphobic ect and trying to have them cancelled. They say they see woman’s pain because they took a trip to the library but are unwilling to protest the closure of libraries and facilities.
The issue for me is we repeat the trauma but we want to cure the trauma with actions that are not actions in exact parallels with capitalism that provides meat with out haemoglobin, milk with out fat, sweets with out sugar and multi culturalism with out clashes. A vision of change where no one is hurt and well meaning academics remain cocooned in their safe place.
Its worth noting too that no all sexual abusers are men. But yes its a problem and better care for victims and the mentally ill is essential. That said in my view the only way that’s going to happen is if we say goodbye to neo liberalism that puts money and big business first and people “last”
yes absolutley
no more . draw a line in the sand and thats that . no excuses .
Big businesses are still coming first, them and the farmers who cry like babies, yet we just paid out millions to fix their m bovis mess, they are the true privileged ones in this country. In the mean time while many NZers have low paying jobs with not enough hours our government continues to appease the privileged ones and we now have 5 million people here.
exactly Michelle , the porn industry is huge its worth billions
and the thing about porn is that for the watcher to keep the buzz alive over time ,
its got to get harder and harder . and violent ..
You may not have heard the term enjoying rough sex, but it is fairly common. Unfortunately there are always some people who ignore safe words/agreed non verbal cues and continue on, crossing a line of consent. This is rife in the BDSM scene.
Consenting adults, choking is acceptable play. BUT the real issue is what should be outlawed…the staunch refusal to accept any responsibility when in a position of power. I hope the recognition of the failure to protect a sex partner comes through strongly in the verdict.
Although generally I feel people should do as they wish with their bodies, I’d like to see the term “destroyed” removed from stories/porn/other media when describing a sex act due to the way it conveys the extreme degradation of a human via sex, in other words the language is suggestive of rape and sort of welcomes rape into the viewer’s consciousness even when a rape act hasn’t occurred – can we get a big, “no, thanks” to that?
Choking can be part of a consensual sexual relationship. As can ‘rough sex’. There’s a lot of communication and trust that takes this from being unacceptable in ordinary circumstances, to acceptable.
I do think there is an epidemic of porn-fueled sex play that is non-consensual or at the very least, coerced, but I think this has emerged due to a lack of discussion, emotion-provoking media portrayals and low quality pornography. We’re living in this dual world where sexual freedoms are more mainstream, but we haven’t developed gender-relations that enable safe sexual encounters.
That EL James has made millions out of the fifty shades nonsense which would have us believe that women get off on being dominated. I call bullshit on this deception. Women get off on being loved and treated as such. As for rough sex, from my experience it is anal then oral, quite disgusting and vomit inducing, even if you are drunk/stoned out of your brain. As for safe words, impossible during the latter anyway, panic would drive them out of your mind.