Archbishop Geoffrey Smith says former governor general should ‘step back and resign his orders’ despite not being defrocked by church
The Anglican church’s most senior Australian leader has called for the former Brisbane archbishop and governor general Peter Hollingworth to resign for “the good of the church”.
Hollingworth was last month found to have committed serious misconduct while archbishop in the 1990s when he failed to act to remove known paedophiles from the church.
Continue reading...Internet Watch Foundation says amount of material showing most extreme form of sexual abuse has doubled since 2020
The most extreme form of child sexual abuse material accounted for a fifth of such content found online last year, according to a report.
Category A abuse represented 20% of illegal images discovered online last year by the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based body that monitors distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). It found more than 51,000 instances of such content, which can include the most severe imagery including rape, sadism and bestiality.
The NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331.
Continue reading...The former governor general and former Anglican archbishop of Brisbane was the subject of complaints about his handling of child abuse complaints in the 1990s
The Anglican church’s complaints body has ruled former governor general Peter Hollingworth should not be defrocked despite upholding multiple allegations of misconduct over his handling of child abuse complaints while in a senior leadership role.
Hollingworth has been the subject of complaints over his handling of abuse cases in the Anglican church while archbishop of Brisbane in the 1990s, a role he held for 11 years before becoming Australia’s 23rd governor general.
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Continue reading...Global alliance including NCA and FBI says Meta’s decision to encrypt direct messages could harm children
An alliance of the world’s most powerful law enforcement agencies including the FBI, Interpol and Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have condemned Meta’s plans to encrypt direct messages on Facebook Messenger and Instagram, saying that doing so will weaken the ability to keep child users safe.
The Virtual Global Taskforce, made up of 15 agencies, is chaired by the NCA and also includes Europol and the Australian federal police among its membership. The VGT has spoken out, it says, owing to the “impending design choices” by Meta, which it says could cause serious harm.
Continue reading...HSIB report identifies several barriers to child safeguarding in hospital emergency departments
Staff in hospital emergency departments in England are struggling to spot when infants are being physically abused by their parents, raising the risk of further harm, an investigation has found.
Clinicians often do not know what to do if they are concerned that a child’s injuries are not accidental because there is no guidance, according to a report from the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) that identifies several barriers to child safeguarding in emergency departments.
Continue reading...Prime minister says offenders have been protected by ‘political correctness’ as he announces ‘grooming gangs taskforce’
Starmer says he has not talked to Jeremy Corbyn for two and a half years.
Q: Is he a friend?
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak claims victims previously ignored ‘due to cultural sensitivity and political correctness’
Downing Street has denied using dog-whistle generalisations to launch a crackdown on grooming gangs, after the NSPCC and experts warned that framing the issue as one based on ethnicity could hamper efforts to tackle it.
After Suella Braverman said “almost all” members of such gangs were British Pakistani men who held attitudes incompatible with British values, critics pointed to a 2020 Home Office report that concluded it was impossible to say if any particular ethnic group was disproportionately represented in such offending.
Continue reading...Ruth Perry was told that Caversham primary school in Reading would be downgraded to inadequate
A headteacher killed herself after she was told her school would be given the lowest possible Ofsted rating, her family has said.
Ruth Perry, who had worked at Caversham primary school in Reading for 13 years, took her own life in January after she was informed the school was being downgraded from outstanding to inadequate.
Continue reading...Report says Aboriginal kids now account for 43.8% of children in out-of home care, up from 38.4%
The New South Wales government has been lashed for effectively abandoning its own strategy to reduce the representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care and failing its own targets.
The state ombudsman, Paul Miller, handed down a scathing report into the five-year Aboriginal Outcomes Strategy (AOS), noting that since its 2017 launch the Department of Communities and Justice appears to have abandoned it without explanation.
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Continue reading...Take It Down allows anyone to anonymously generate a digital fingerprint of the image they want deleted, without uploading it
“Once you send that photo, you can’t take it back,” goes the warning to teenagers, often ignoring the reality that many teens send explicit images of themselves under duress, or without understanding the consequences.
A new online tool aims to give some control back to teens, or people who were once teens, and take down explicit images and videos of themselves from the internet.
Continue reading...Charity says police recording has improved but online grooming has risen and tech firms are failing to act
Police have recorded a surge in child abuse image offences in the UK, with more than 30,000 reported in the most recent year, according to a report from the NSPCC.
That is an increase of more than 66% on figures from five years ago, when police forces across the country recorded 18,574 such offences.
Continue reading...Independent commission reaches conclusion after hearing evidence from over 500 survivors last year
Catholic clergy in Portugal have abused nearly 5,000 children since 1950, an independent commission said on Monday after hearing hundreds of survivors’ accounts.
Thousands of reports of paedophilia within the church have surfaced around the world, and Pope Francis is under pressure to tackle the scandal.
Continue reading...Internet Watch Foundation reports rise in UK children aged seven to 10 manipulated into abusing themselves on camera
Internet predators have exploited a rise in online activity during lockdown to manipulate primary school age children into abusing themselves on camera, with reports of such imagery rising by more than 1,000% in the UK since 2019.
The Internet Watch Foundation received reports of 63,050 webpages containing images and videos of children aged seven to 10 sexually abusing themselves on camera last year, an increase of just over 1,000% on the year before the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...Fears an increase in allegations, particularly against mothers, of deliberately alienating a child against the other parent in domestic abuse cases may put victims at further risk
The UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls is to investigate how family courts around the world approach “parental alienation” (PA) and how this may lead to the double victimisation of those who have suffered domestic abuse.
There is no single agreed definition of parental alienation but a generally accepted description is a child’s rejection of one parent as a result of psychological manipulation by their preferred parent.
Continue reading...Condemnation comes as the state’s truth-telling inquiry, the Yoorrook Justice commission, prepares to hold hearings on the subject from Monday
Aboriginal leaders say Victoria’s “culturally unsafe” child protection system is creating “a new stolen generation”, as the state’s truth-telling inquiry prepares to hold hearings on the subject from Monday.
Last year, one in nine Aboriginal babies aged under one was taken away from their families by the state of Victoria, more than double the national average.
Continue reading...Revised online safety bill proposes fines of 10% of revenue but drops harmful communications offence
Social media platforms that breach pledges to block sexist and racist content face the threat of substantial fines under government changes to the online safety bill announced on Monday.
Under the new approach, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter must also give users the option of avoiding content that is harmful but does not constitute a criminal offence. This could include racism, misogyny or the glorification of eating disorders.
Continue reading...Head of West Midlands police warns of rising crime in poorest areas as forces are stretched beyond capacity
A child experiencing a mental health crisis had to live in a police station for two days due to a lack of psychiatric places, a chief constable has revealed, as he condemned austerity for hitting the poorest areas hardest.
Sir David Thompson, who leads West Midlands police, said his force – which is still missing officers and funding after cuts – was being asked to do too much, and warned of rising crime as desperation increases in the poorest areas.
Dismissed attacks from government and rightwing media that claim the police are too woke.
Condemned those trying to drag policing into the “culture wars”.
Revealed fears that the poorest areas would be hit hardest again by the cost of living crisis, fuelling a “real risk” of rising crime.
Said that bias explained some of the reasons that black people experienced more use of force and coercive powers than other groups.
Called for a radical rethink on tackling the problems blighting society, as public services work in “silos”.
Warned that police were being expected to do too much, including in the field of mental health.
Continue reading...Nonconsensual explicit images to be tackled in bill returning to parliament next month
Nonconsensual “deepfake” pornography and “downblousing” will be made illegal when the online safety bill returns to parliament in December, the government has announced.
Explicit images taken without someone’s consent, through hidden cameras or surreptitious photography, will be criminalised, including so-called downblousing pictures. A previous law banning “upskirt” voyeurism left a loophole that failed to tackle images that weren’t taken with the intent of photographing the victim’s genitals or buttocks.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Liz Roberts says familial sexual abuse is a ‘hidden scourge’ that has long-term impact on victims
A woman who was sexually abused by her older brother half a century ago when she was a young girl has waived her right to anonymity to describe her decades of torment and to encourage other victims of familial abuse to come forward.
Liz Roberts, 59, a former police officer, said the abuse carried out Andrew Herbert when she was about eight had led to a life of self-loathing and shame punctuated by episodes of depression, anxiety and self-harm.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Further changes to new legislation requiring social workers to prove they have made ‘active efforts’ to keep families together will be considered in a year
The minister responsible for child services in New South Wales says she wants to do more to address the “over representation” of Aboriginal children removed from their families, acknowledging the community’s frustration at the slow pace of reform.
On Thursday, the government passed a new bill that requires social workers to prove they have made “active efforts” to keep families together before courts can approve the removal of children from their parents.
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