VAPOUR TRAILS – PART TWO
Victims of child
abuse cannot take legal action against their abusers after a certain period of
time has elapsed due to laws concerning statues of limitations. In many cases it
is no more than six years. Consider that for a moment. A four-year-old has
until they are ten to take legal action. A sixteen-year-old has until they are
twenty-two. They must find the means to fund this farce. They must have a
working knowledge of the legal system in order to document the abuse inflicted
upon them, and to have witnesses who can withstand the process of
cross-examination where a second predator will attempt to slander them, and
force them to relive the horror and terror they endured while the abuser gets
off on the additional torment inflicted.
Many victims suffer
from PTSD, anxiety, depression and a whole slew of other psychological
disorders that cripple them for life. They lack the courage to come forward,
rightfully terrified by the threats their abusers make to force them to remain
silent. They are defamed by the abusers, their reputation tattered and
irretrievable. Their support network of friends and family stripped from them.
They are on their own and left at the untender mercies of a police and public
service that is indifferent at best, vindictively spiteful at worst. They are
‘represented’ by politicians that set that very example.
And every day, we
hear reports of the few whistle-blowers the media bothers to cover, to support,
who can reveal evidence of the same evil perpetuated in every public and
private agency across the country, across the globe. We know what happens when
victims and witnesses are forced to remain silent. We know what happens when
authorities refuse to listen or refuse to make real, positive change. We know
what happens when there is no real disincentive to deter bad behaviour. Like my
mother said when I asked her why she brutalised me and my siblings, for
decades: “Because I can and no-one will stop me.”
The systemic
failure, the abuse of power, and the entrenched culture of corruption continues
unabated, and too often escalates. We have politicians profiting from various
conflicts of interest, fighting and squabbling over trivial things in a pissing
competition to maintain power for the sake of power and what they can get for
themselves. Instead of addressing real issues, instead of listening to the
people who need help and real representation, they are telling the public what
is and isn’t important and tending to the demands of those of wealth and
affluence, big business and multi-billionaires.
When they cannot
bury reports of corruption, and cannot silence the media’s efforts to expose
it, they will respond with empty rhetoric designed to placate angry voters
until the community is distracted by the next big story. If you have no means
to thrust your evidence of injustice into the social-spotlight, then you are
subjected to the pitiless bureaucracy and beaten down until you learn your
place under the boots of abusers in positions of authority protecting their
own. That remark was harsh? What would you call people whose efforts are
directed at finding reasons not to help instead of ways to correct injustice,
to do their damn jobs? To a victim, there’s not a lot of difference between
abusers and those that conceal and enable them.
But that’s the way
it is. You try to report child abuse, domestic violence, workplace bullying and
systemic failure. See what happens. Consider what happens when the authorities
to whom you must report are part of the problem. Consider what happens when you
go to a higher authority and they instruct you to follow protocol and go
through the channels you just explained are flawed. Consider what happens when
you try to expose the problem to the media and they ignore you because there is
no profit or they are protecting those you are trying to expose. Consider what
happens if, in rare circumstances, you succeed.
The media reports on
some of the investigations, the inquests, the commissions into this entrenched
culture of corruption that leads to so much systemic failure and corruption.
The findings and recommendations. They rarely report how those investigations,
the inquests, the commissions are conducted in isolation of so many of the
victims. People like that son have never been contacted for their opinion.
Never asked about the things they have mentioned, repeatedly, in
correspondences. How many other victims, do you suppose, have made complaints
about the same people, yet never know of one another because, even if their
complaint was recorded, the rights of the ‘accused’ are of more value than
those of the victims?
The responses, those
that are not indifference, insults, mockery and threats, continue to push
victims toward agencies that will help them learn how to remain silent. For all
the talk, they refuse to do the one thing they should: investigate, press
charges, and prosecute the predators. The simple dignity of being allowed to speak
the truth that others might know what really happened and help make reparations
to restore justice. Instead, they respond in the same manner as the victim has
exposed, that entrenched culture of corruption that allows systemic failure to
fester and spread like a malignant, aggressive cancer.
Their actions did
not reflect the words they spoke on camera and in reports. To add insult to
injury, the son found himself added to mailing lists for the various people and
agencies that refused to help. He would get mail every so often asking for him
to donate money to them so victims could be helped. When he wrote back to
express his anger at the hypocrisy… nothing. No reply. The mail asking for
donations and all the empty rhetoric, however, continued unabated.
How is all of this
possible? Well, we only need to have a look at the efforts of media trash like
John Laws, Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Mark Latham, and Bill O’Reilly.
Misogynistic, racist, homophobic, right-wing fascists whose continued existence
is an offence to humanity. Their abusive behaviour provided a great deal of
profit to the media outlets that enabled them. They appeal to the very worst
elements in a society raised to be self-absorbed, self-centred, parasitic,
narcissistic trolls.
These ‘men’, many
little better than animals, shaped the most vulnerable members of our society,
the people with an intellect so woefully inadequate it is surprising they
manage to avoid a Darwin Award as long as they do. But how is it that they
could inflict themselves and their ignorant, arrogant, bigoted idiocy on so
many and cause so much harm for so long? Well, their employers did the math.
They compared their profits generated by these scumbags to how much they cost
in legal actions, who they had to protect out of affiliation or the threat of
even more revelations being exposed, and maintained them as long as it remained
profitable. They wilfully sacrificed others for their own profit and
gratification.
Commercial news media has a long, pitiful history regarding reporting on incidents. Too many have been caught out twisting their reports into stories founded on ‘alternative facts’, defaming and vilifying people to create sensationalism and controversy that generates more interest and greater profit. The government, particularly the LNP, has demonstrated what happens when a tax-payer funded media source reveals what they wish kept secret, their displeasure exacted in dishonest propaganda campaigns to discredit reporters to generate hate from right-wing sycophants, and funding cuts to limit or silence criticism.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-26/queensland-youth-detention-report-handed-down-overhaul/8472136
It’s not a healthy
path for any society to follow when the media is deliberately dishonest or
punished for exposing facts that include systemic failure or hypocrisy like the
abuses in the Don Dale Detention Centre and Queensland Youth Justice system,
Child Protection, or the Police Services where whistle-blowers like Sergeant Rick
Flori. Flori is a good example, a man who did what was right, managed to get
the media to help expose the rot, and now faces trial for criminal misconduct
after daring to expose police corruption when he knew official channels would
cover-up the incident and punish whistle-blowers.
How is it possible
that all of the leaked footage of abuses at the Don Dale Detention Centre are
not evidence of systemic failure? That these are all isolated incidents? That
children being rushed and beaten to the ground by multiple men twice their
size, stripped naked and humiliated in incidents that have all the hall-marks
of sexual predation, tied to chairs, locked in isolation, physically and
psychologically tortured, and left with a lifetime of mental and social
problems can be dismissed so easily?
How can missing
footage be used as a means to disprove ‘allegations’ without raising even an
eyebrow? How can 245 pages of a 600 page report be redacted, the testimony of
victims silenced, by a so-called representative government? Yes, most of us get
it. These kids were in there for a reason. They are convicted of violent crimes
against other people. And assuming they are actually guilty, this somehow
justifies those inhuman acts being committed against them. The same crimes they
are accused of committing. Those same anti-social, psychotic attitudes. And
this is going to help rehabilitate them how?
It’s very easy to see nothing and make a finding of “insufficient evidence” to prove an “allegation” when you refuse to look at the evidence and silence the victims. When you rule evidence inadmissible. Bully a victim to discredit them. Prevent a victim from documenting or accessing evidence. When you insist a victim should have documented all the abuse when they were a child who had no means of doing so, or even the knowledge they should. When you decide, arbitrarily, that statute laws mean that, somehow, violence and psychological harm no longer effects the victim. That it effectively never happened. Even easier if you refuse to investigate at all. If you can silence a victim long enough that, statue laws kick in.
If you silence a
victim long enough, future authorities will do the same because they assume
that if there was anything to investigate, someone would have done so, and if
there was systemic failure then it needs to be covered-up by refusing to
investigate. If you wait long enough, witnesses die and (with any luck) so will
the victim. If you wait long enough you can question the validity of the
testimony, claiming the victim or witness could not possibly remember the past
so well. Try being a victim. You can’t forget.
If forced to take
action because the media decides there is profit to be made by exposing a problem,
then the illusion of a real investigation works best if you have a scape-goat
and predetermined findings. Better still if the outcome demonstrates, in no
uncertain terms, what happens to people who actually believe the bullshit
magniloquent oratory of authorities encouraging them to come forward, report
crimes and seek justice. And we accuse the Middle East and Asian countries of
crimes against humanity.
A school billboard
recently carried the message “your attitude determines your direction”. It was
all upper case, shouting its flawed and idiotic claims at viewers, imprinting
that foolish belief and continuing the entrenched culture of corruption that
leads to the endless cycle of systemic failure and injustice. There are a great
many physicists and sociologists who would argue the assertion. They would
insist it is gravity and financial affluence respectively, both being forces outside
the control of most normal humans.
Your attitude,
despite the ranting of the over-privileged and or unhinged, has very little
impact on direction. Whoever came up with that mindless banality obviously
never encountered the reality of the Australian police, public service, and
politicians. Our society is conditioning children to become adults that believe
in flawed, idiotic fortune-cookie idée recue that becomes the idée fixe and
ensures the unceasing brutality of the entrenched culture of corruption: to
become the predators or victims that we insist on pushing over the edge of
depression into dark places, and then blame them for what is inflicted upon
them.
How can we expect
this insanity to end, to affect positive change, when we refuse to listen to
the victims? When we place the rights of the accused above those of the victim?
When the presumption of innocence is only afforded to the accused, and the
victim assumed to be a liar? When victims can be bullied, slandered, mocked,
and intimidated by the perpetrator, the legal defence, and the authorities that
are supposed to help? How the hell did we ever reach this place where justice
and the lives of victims is worth so little?
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