Child Protection weekend at Imaginif
August 9, 2008
What does a child protection advocate do on her weekend?
Protects her grandchild
of course.
Child protection is everybody’s business. Grandparents, are you ready to make it yours too this weekend and always?
The theme of this year’s
Child Protection Week is
Children See, Children Do.
What do you want your grandchild to see you doing?
Photo is of peaceful Amelie and Mema (me) NOT about to spit the dummy.
The Case of female oral sex on male child
August 7, 2008
Barbara Case, 36 year old Californian woman, yesterday pleaded guilty to performing oral sex and having sexual intercourse with a male, Australian, child under 16: Woman had sex with 15-year-old internet pal
After befriending the child on the internet, Barbara Case flew to Australia and entered into a sexual relationship with a minor. Ms Case was found in the company of her child victim, three days after the male minor had been reported missing.
No matter how many warnings are posted about internet safety and sex predators who groom via social network sites, our young people and children are still open to the sleezy advances of perpetrators.
While sexual assault is a gendered crime, women do sexually abuse. Anecdotally via my professional practice, oral sex on boys is a favorite of female paedophiles.
Every case of child sexual abuse is abhorrent. As a woman, and a mother, I find female paedophiles all the more disturbing.
Ms Case, if you have children I hope that they are never subjected to the abuse of power, trust and privilege that you have used over a 16 year old male child.
Who is chatting to you and your child? Remain vigilant and hold child protection high on your list of values and ethics. Male or female abuser, child sexual assault is never acceptable.
Educate yourself about sex offenders. Start with these articles:
Alleged sex predator masquerades as parent blogger
Know your internet content provider responsibilities
Not all male family bloggers are sex offenders
Use protective behaviour games to introduce conversations around personal safety on the internet and in daily life:
Parent Sense
Working in Innisfail today
July 31, 2008
Somebody staple my feet to the ground. I honestly have not been around Imaginif house very much this last week! Poor Boy, he must wonder if his mother is still part of the family!!!!!
For those trying to contact me today, I am working in Innisfail again (Thursday only, no over night stays this time). I am doing some contract work for Wulngah, a drug and alcohol program offered through Mamu Health. Leaving at 7.30 am, I will not be back in Cairns until 7.30 pm. The wonderful administration fairy Amanda will be around Imaginif House in Cairns to take calls and book appointments and both talk doctors, Rebekah and Fran will be in today (albeit in the counselling rooms behind closed doors).
Since moving to the new office at 30 James St I have received many cards and well wishes from blog readers and other people that I do not know. Thank you. It is wonderful to know that you receive some positive child protection tidbits from the blog. If child protection is everybody’s responsibility then you are all showing that you are those somebody. On behalf of children the world over, thanks for looking out for kids.
Yesterday I received a card from Cecelia. Unsure of which Cecelia it is, I just wanted to publicly say thank you. Your words were beautiful and bought a tear to my tough eyes. Thank you, and thank you also for caring about child protection.
Mary Poppins, child abuse and popular children’s fiction.
July 30, 2008
P.L.Travers, author of Mary Poppins, grew up in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. Her growth though, her normal, safe, childhood, was stunted thanks to the abuse perpetrated by her loving parents.
Mary Poppins was Written by a Child in Need of Protection: Mary Poppins was originally written by Pamela Travers as a parody - a spiteful poke at “good” families gone wrong. The central characters of the story, the Banks family, were a glossed up representation of Pamela’s family of origin and the story line reflected Pamela’s attachment disordered thinking and fear of abandonment.
Born Helen Goff, in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia in 1899, the celebrated author of Mary Poppins was the daughter of a bank manager who drank himself to death by the time Helen was seven. Helen’s mother, Margaret, dithered on for a few more years before also giving up on life and attempting suicide in a local river. One thundery night, Margaret Goff announced to her three children that she was off to kill herself. Helen, the oldest (age 10) was terrified. She was left, alone, to settle her younger siblings and she coped by putting them to bed, all three together, on the lounge room floor. In an effort to divert their attention from frantic thoughts around their mother’s impending violent death, Helen made up fantasy stories about magical flying horses in faraway lands that would ride them all to safety.
Although Margaret returned, unsuccessful in her suicide attempt, Helen withdrew from the hurt caused by her family and instead found solace in the strength of a spinster aunt. Helen’s dysfunctional family predicament haunted her for the rest of her life. She was never able to rid herself of images concerning the appalling fate of children whose parents were unable to care for them.
At 21 years of age, Helen changed her name to Pamela L. Travers. Soon after she moved to London to make a new life as a writer. She never married, wore trousers (totally unacceptable in those days) when she wanted, had an affair with an older married man and eventually entered into a long-term relationship with another woman. Ever desperate to protect children, at age 40, a single parent, she adopted and raised an Irish orphan.
Appalled at the accepted treatment of children by their loving families, Pamela Travers wrote Mary Poppins as a piece of anti-nanny propaganda. Angered by the middle classes who shunned their children, Mary Poppins character was essentially a therapeutic catharsis for Travers wounded inner child. Mary was designed to bring the middle classes to their senses by reflecting their own weak ethics and inability to provide emotional stability to their children. The moral of the story was that the Nanny got the chop because she was no longer required: the middle classes awoke to their children’s needs and would forever more parent appropriately.
Walt Disney rewrote Mary Poppins, the book, as a sreen play (1964) and created the now immortalised personification of Mary Poppins as the all rounded protector of children. His movie made Mary Poppins synonymous with love, magic and umbrellas - a protective accessory (Umbrellas and Parrots to Help Play Protect our Children. Thanks Mary Poppins). Travers reportedly sat through the opening night of the stage play with tears of despair running from her eyes. Her message to the middle classes had been turned around by Disney to now romantise Nannies and ineffectual parenting. Such is the power of Hollywood and patriarchy.
No matter how diluted the original message became in the story of Mary Poppins, I remain grateful to Pamela Travers, an abused child, for having written a story that turned bad to good: first for her own healing and second as a classic piece of international children’s fiction.
Will you ever again be able to watch the movie or read the book without sparing a thought for all those children who miss out on safe, attachment strong parenting? Do you know how to use a story, any story, to help children solve problems? It is called bibliotherapy and is something that every parent can do with a little framework around how to do it: Are children’s books providing them with enough advise?
Thanks to the wonderful Alison over at Three Times Kewl for blogging about her inability to accept help, even from her hippie Nanny: not only did it give me a jolly good laugh it also reminded me of the sad history of Nanny Poppins.
Above picture is of me with a bronze statute of my favourite Nanny, Mary Poppins, outside of the bank where she was born in Maryborough, QLD. I went to Maryborough as an invited guest speaker for the launch of Sexual Violence Awareness Month (2006) and facilitated some protective behaviour training while there. Mary Poppins, and the true story, featured heavily in my presentations. RIP Pamela Travers…I will tell your story of truth whenever I have the opportunity.
Sunny winter in the NPA
July 30, 2008
I have just returned from a case note writing workshop in the NPA (Northern Peninsula Area). NPA is made up of five separate Indigenous communities: Bamaga, Seisia, New Mapoon, Umagico and Injinoo. The northern most point of Australia, the area is not far south of the equator; tropical, beautiful and NOT COLD AT ALL IN WINTER. Yip Yah….I had a ball without my constricting blazer.
Could you take a working winter day where you have to see this in one direction…
and this in the other direction?
Fantabulouso,orwhat!!!!!!!!!!!! I can take it, I’ve been good.
This was my tropical hideaway cabin
and this was the river view from my room (no crocodiles).
Heaven………………….. and then I had to go to work! The work though was just as heavenly. What a wonderfully dedicated and motivated mob. A range of programs were represented at the workshop (pictured below, working) and in our individual debriefs. Each of them held child protection and child safety in high esteem and each of them welcomed me back like I was one of their community (it has been eighteen months since I was last there for protective behaviour training). Thank you guys, I loved being with you all. You taught me as much as I taught you.
Work indeed. I have just had a mini break and thoroughly enjoyed reconnecting with some old friends and colleagues. Thank you NPA, Family Resource Centre in Bamaga and a very special thank you to the wonderful Therapeutic Register offered via RAATSICC (Remote Area Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Care Advisory Association). A wonderfully successful trip…I’ll be back next month for your Child Protection for Child Care workers service delivery training at Injinoo and New Mapoon.
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