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- [00:04]
A
This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie and today we're re issuing episode 265 from 2022 with very good reason. Yesterday the Albanese government introduced legislation known as the Survivors Law. It's aimed at preventing convicted child sex abusers from using superannuation to shield assets from unpaid court ordered compensation. If passed, the reforms would allow victim survivors to to seek access to certain additional super contributions from their offenders and would ensure those debts can still be pursued even if an offender declares bankruptcy. In this conversation Andrew Carpenter and Adam Washburn join us to explain why advocates have long called for these changes and what meaningful reform could mean for survivors seeking justice and financial support to rebuild their lives. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created. The Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
- [01:15]
B
So I've been doing survivor victim work for around 10 years now and my, it was actually my mum of all people, she used to work in superannuation and she came home one day and said oh, did you know that the Liberal government is trying to pass legislation which enables the victims of crime to go after the super of sexual offenders? And I had no idea. So I went on, looked at all the consultation papers and thought oh you know that that's an absolute no brainer, like it's something that will save the taxpayers money and will punish pedophiles further. And I thought that's great. And so I thought nothing of it. And then every, I think my mum's work had board meetings every two months and every time she'd always raise oh you know, we discussed this again and so I just thought well something like this should just be easily passed because it's right now it's a taxpayer that's basically covering the cost of all pedophiles crimes. So whether it be through Centrelink, Medicare, housing and so on.
- [02:12]
C
So, so what do you mean by that though? What do you mean by we taxpayers were covering the cost of their crimes, their housing or their victims housing and all of those things you just mentioned, victims.
- [02:24]
B
So many of the victims they will never be able to work, they'll never be able to own a house and they're effectively on Centrelink. And so what I'm saying is a lot of people from the ages of 18 until death are on Centrelink. They get housing benefits, they get pharmaceutical benefits because they just can't work and all of that has been Paid by the taxpayer. And it just baffles me that the change like this hasn't happened. So all through 2019, I kept on asking and just thought, you know what, something's obviously not changing. So in 2020, I just thought, you know what, I'm going to try and make some noise about this and try and get that change. So from 2020 until now, I've been basically contacting politicians, advocates, and every politician I've spoken to at the first instance had no idea about this proposed legislation.
- [03:14]
C
Was it affected by the Royal Commission, the Royal Commission into Institutional what was it? Responses to child sexual abuse? So, obviously, through that process, let's say the Catholic Church, for example, was asked to compensate victims individually specifically, but not. Not offenders specifically compensating their own victims one on one. Is that. That's what you're talking about here?
- [03:41]
B
Yeah, and that's what's been happening. The redress scheme was effectively set up for people to actually get damages through institutions. Now, a lot of churches were rubbing their together because instead of getting sued for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, they were able to get out of paying something a lesser amount. And it's something that the taxpayers have put in almost $12.5 billion into the redress scheme. And guess how much is costing the offenders?
- [04:08]
C
Nothing. Nothing ever. This is extraordinary.
- [04:11]
B
And what. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I had a meeting with the Department of Home Affairs a while ago and they were talking about setting up a new fund that's $150 million that's targeted to compensate people from overseas that are being abused. Because what's been happening through the pandemic is a lot of these pedophiles can't actually travel, so they're now paying people overseas to live stream child abuse. And when I said to the Home affairs, that's well and good that there's people that can be compensated for this, but who's paying for it? And I always hate using this example, but I did a lecture at Adelaide Uni the other day and I said, put your hand up if you've got a speeding fine lately. And people put their hand up, what do you care about more? The points of the financial consequence? And everyone says, oh, yeah, the fine. And you think we're seeing a lot of suspended sentences in very short jail terms. If we start seeing people that have their life savings up for grabs when something like this happens, it should hopefully put a stop to it. Most days in court, half the list is it's growing and it's most days it's half the list of suppressed identities of people abusing children. Now it's, it's not slowing down. The only way that you could try and do that is either make harsher jail sentences, which there would obviously be blowback from lawyers and courts about that, or make legislative changes where people are finally truly accountable for all the crimes. It's the crimes that they commit. It's something that carries the survivors for life.
- [05:38]
D
Yeah.
- [05:38]
B
It's not a broken arm that heals.
- [05:40]
C
No. And with sentencing always, the richer people don't end up, you know, in the situation where they're sentenced oftentimes anyway, do they? Because the better, the more money they have, the better the lawyers they can hire and all of those things. So generally it's the, it's the lower income people who, who are facing more sentencing or longer sentences or whatever. Anyway, if we're talking about financial compensation, then that's going to hit everybody.
- [06:07]
B
It will. And the common trend that's been happening, that I've noticed over the past few years, a lot of matters that I do, is that when offenders are arrested right away, they'll mortgage their house, they'll get the best lawyers possible and what they'll try to do is deplete all their assets in legal fees. And then when it comes to the people suing them, they just say, bring it on, you can't touch me. Because there's a significant level of narcissism about pedophiles where they always turn around and they look at their offenders and they say, how dare you do this to me? I had one offender that he was found guilty in district court. He appealed to the Supreme Court upheld guilt. High Court upheld guilt. There was four independent witnesses that saw him abusing this child. And when we went to sue him, he had the goal to say, she is ruining my life. And he said, I would rather pay a barrister $20,000 a day to run her through the ringer and go into trial again, then forgive her a sin. Until I reminded him that he owns a million dollar freehold house. I'd be more than happy to take that off his hands now that that matter went away pretty quickly after that. But that's just the attitude that pedophiles show. And I've been unfortunately dealing with pedophiles for many years and I always find them to be the worst criminals because there's no level of justification for abusing a child. If you look at murder, you know, self defense, self defense of another drink driving, oh, my friend had a heart attack. I Had to to a hospital. There's mitigating sentences with all crimes, but there's none with these crimes. There's no justification, there's no argument of a valid defence. It's an intentional act that's done for someone's self gratification.
- [07:46]
C
Especially when we take into account, you know, this fact that we know now that such a small percentage of these offenders are clinically paedophiles, that so often this is a crime of opportunity, that people just see these victims as defenceless, as helpless as their. Basically, it's an opportunistic crime. I mean, that's just the worst case of offender.
- [08:09]
B
Yeah. And I've got two children. Well, I've got two young children. I can't think, you know, of anything. What anyone would harm a child. It's. It's just baffling me. But it's. It's such a sickness that it's still happening and the punishments don't meet the crimes. It should be something where these offenders need to be wholly accountable for the lives they ruined.
- [08:30]
C
The other growth sector in our community is aged care. I was just reading two days ago that sexual assault in aged care is growing and especially in dementia wards. And again, this is a crime of opportunity. This is another group of people in our society who are helpless and that's
- [08:49]
B
all people are doing, they're picking on vulnerable people with the hope that they don't come forward. And there was an inquiry done in 2010 known as the Mulligan Inquiry. And the. Do you guys know the average time frame it takes for someone to come forward to report child abuse?
- [09:03]
C
Again, only because of the Royal Commission. It's like 33 years or something, isn't it?
- [09:07]
B
33 years. And so there was one, there was one lady that she came forward when she was 97 years old and it happened to her when she was seven years old. And the redress scheme set up for a period of 10 years. Once that, once that finishes, then what? When people finally come forward and it's not something where people just think, I'm going to come forward. I had one client of mine, she came forward after 20 years after hearing a song on the radio and the words spoke to her and she just went, I need to come forward. I've had people that have basically broke down in front of their parents when they talk about why they got divorced because of the behavior of their child and they said, I acted out because this happened to me. And it's not something where you can go to hospital and say, hey, look, at me, I've been assaulted. It's something that people carry these secrets for years and most of the time it's because the offenders are saying, oh, you know, if, if you hurt me or if you report me to the police, I'll go to jail. And that's often after a long period of grooming.
- [10:04]
C
Well, the other thing that we learned through the Royal commission was that by the time some people disclose after those 33 years on average, that they have been coping in their own ways, sometimes self medicating with drugs or alcohol, and sometimes there's a, a fairly large percentage of those people who have come in contact then with the legal system in negative ways. And so that makes it hard for them to pursue their offenders through the courts. I'm sure you found that in your work.
- [10:34]
B
Yeah, it's the hard thing with the lack of period or the lack of time is if someone said to you, what were you doing on June 9, 1993? You have no idea. So the threshold for criminal matters is beyond reasonable doubt. Need to be able to pinpoint an exact date, exact time when something happened. A lot of these people have the most traumatic times their life happen when they're such a young age and it will be impossible to know exact date. So that's how a lot of these offenders get off, because they can't actually prove when and where it happened. The closest that people can get would be, oh, I was wearing a summer uniform, so it must have been either the first term or fourth term, where the civil courts are there because they have a different evidence onus. It's on the balance of probability. So you can safely say, well, a court can say it's highly likely that this happened, that the conduct happened, the injuries flowed thereon. So the conviction rate in, in Adelaide from a few years ago was less than 2% of child sex matters.
- [11:40]
C
But then the success, interim, in that interim, as a victim, I may have developed an alcohol addiction. I may have some convictions for petty theft, for assault, for, you know, because my life, as you were saying earlier, has spiraled. It's, you know, I've not been able to work as a result of my PTSD and all of those things.
- [12:01]
B
Yeah, it's. I've had clients that have not been able to leave the house and they're in their 30s. I had the worst one I've ever done was a girl that was adopted at six weeks old and she was effectively tortured until she was 18. She was tied to the bed every day. She has, she has deformities of a vagina and anus from the non stop issues. And she got to the point where she's probably the strongest person I've ever met in my life. She got to a point when she was 40 and she's gone, you know what, I'm not going to let that guy control me. She went to a police station, she called her dad and said, why did you do this to me? And he actually on the phone apologized and said, I'm so sorry, I should never have done that. And he's currently serving 10 years in jail. And so there's normally like the, the come to, I guess the, the come to Jesus mind where people will just have a light go off in their head and just say, you know what, I'm not getting controlled anymore. And sometimes that happens a lot earlier for some people than later. And you know, that's not saying that people come forward 40 years after the fact are wrong. It's people come forward when they're ready to do so. But the offenders usually have such a level of control over them that they try to influence them to not come forward. You're handing a child effectively a life sentence when a pedophile abuses them. And that's the one thing that the courts need to, to realize and that people start needing to be truly accountable for their actions. Because what happens, an offender will go to jail for five years. They'll come out and they'll use their superannuation, they'll buy a house, they'll live comfortably, all while their survivor is in government housing struggling to make ends meet.
- [13:50]
A
If you'd like to talk to someone about abuse that's taken place in your life, no matter how long ago it happened, your GP is always a good place to start. If that's not going to work for you, you can contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or via their website, 1-800-Respect.org au. Or you can call Lifeline's 24 hour phone counselling service on 1311 14.
- [14:22]
E
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- [14:39]
B
So there's avenues you can get compensating through. It's through the victims of crime scheme and that scheme is known as the scheme of absolute last resorts. But then to get victims of crime there has to first be A guilty verdict. And so if there's no conviction, then that scheme doesn't apply. And what I'm seeing across the board is more most people don't have houses. Almost everyone that's worked since the 80s has some level of super. And so the time has gone where people can wave their hands in the air and say, I've got nothing, when they're sitting on a large super fund. And I think the taxpayers would much rather carry someone on an old age pension for the next 10 years rather than a survivor who's effectively going to be on Centrelink for the age from 18 until when they pass away. Like I said, most politicians don't even know that it's there. I met with the Treasury a while ago and they were simply saying, oh well, it's going to take a while to set up. And I said, all right, well when the pandemic hit and the government realized it was going to cost billions and billions of dollars, how quickly did the legislation change to enable people to have early access to their super? And we're not, we're not talking about, you know, a small amount of money. The government is putting $12 billion over a 10 year period for this redress scheme. Now you look at the cost of living today, how much that money could be doing for good instead of having to compensate people when their offenders have assets available up for distribution. I've always used the term it's a no brainer whenever I've spoken about this change. And it is a no brainer. It's going to save taxpayers money, it's going to punish people and it's going to compensate people.
- [16:22]
C
Yeah, I mean they can strip assets from a drug dealer pretty quickly or organized crime participants when they, when they convict them. So yeah, you would think this could be set up fairly quickly.
- [16:35]
B
It's something that's been sitting there since 2018. All the super companies said, yes, this is a great idea, do it. So there was a petition back in 2018 after Maurice van Rijn, who was the former CEO of Vega Cheese, where he abused many children, his care, and he put $9 million in super before he went to jail and said, you can't touch me. And so sitting on $9 million and he's told people, hey, if you want to, if you want to sue me, here's a small amount, it's the best you're going to get. Otherwise I go bankrupt and you won't get a cent. Now when he gets out of jail, he'll be sitting on $9 million and he'll be able to go out and live his lavish life and buy mansions and travel first class, while a lot of his survivors are basically missing out on food so they can afford their medication. About a year ago, I managed to team up with the charity known as Fighters Against Childhood Abuse Australia. And they've been great. They helped do a petition which has got 42,000 signatures now. And when the liberals said they want to change the law, they only had 20,000 signatures then. And then six months later, I teamed up with the Carly Ryan foundation, which is another charity in Adelaide, who again, work with me to try to try to get this change. And I felt like for years I've been going to a gun battle with a slingshot. And as of last week, I've got myself a nuke. Grace Tame has now come on board and we're now saying, look, guys, it's time to pass this. And, you know, Fighters Against Childhood Abuse and Carly Ryan foundation have been great. We've managed to get a. A voice that's very loud who's at the forefront of children's rights coming forward. And all four of us now think, you know, we now have the, the reach to come across and there's something that has to be done to stop these crimes from happening because, you know, sentences where people put in protective custody, it's not an adequate deterrent.
- [18:32]
C
No, absolutely not. No. Where they go get to go and hang out together. Yeah. And Grace has changed laws before, so, yeah, if anyone can do it, she can. And I guess also we've got to lobby the Attorney General, who is now Mark Dreyfus. I can understand, you know, there are issues of sort of common sense, I guess, in that these guys tend to offend repeatedly. So you can have an issue where, you know, if we have one victim at the outset, we can't give them $9 million because perhaps 15 years from now, other victims come forward and then there is nothing left in the kitty. But so, you know, those are sort of kinks that will be ironed out. But the main thing is that we need to strip these offenders of their assets once they are convicted, isn't it? That's really the main issue.
- [19:26]
B
It's not even if they're convicted. It would be if, if someone has a civil action against an offender and where a court has held that it's. It's most likely that this has happened. It should be up for distribution then, because a lot of these, these matters, they just unfortunately don't go to trial in the criminal aspect. So it's effectively enabling people when they can't get the conviction that is rightfully deserved, that they can have other avenues to go through. I mean, a conviction, it's great for the liability aspect, but you don't need that in the civil side to convince a court that something happened. I mean, it goes back to the point before you don't know what you did 30 years ago on the exact date. Yeah, and that's the criminal side. But you can convince a court that something did happen in or about 1992 or 1993. I mean, like most people growing up, I was bullied and I hate bullies. And I always see that these offenders and nothing but bullies. And the only way that you can to stop it from happening is smack them in the face. And instead of using my fists, I'm using the courts. So, I mean, it's hard. I deal with it. You know, I go to the gym, I like Nutella, so I eat a lot of that. But I mean, I, what I do is nothing in comparison to what the survivors live with. I mean, I'm, I've worked hard, I've got through uni and I've been able to get in a position where I can help people. And no matter how stressed out I get from a case, I can guarantee you the people that it's happened to are far more brave and far more resilient than what I'm doing. So the fact that they choose me to come forward and tell their story, it's an honor for me and I just make sure I do my best. And, you know, everyone needs got their own channels of how they, they deal with their stresses. And my thing is I'm in a position where I can come and help people. And the fact that no one was jumping up and down to get this law changed, I thought, you know what, it's the right thing to do. If no one's going to get their voice out there to hear it, let it be me. When I teamed up with Fighters Against Childhood Abuse Australia, Adam, who's been advocating for law change for 10 years, he said to me, my goal is to make Australia the most dangerous place in the world to do this. And I support him. And not only will you lose your freedom and your liberty, you will lose everything you've worked for. And so you're going to start seeing a few people that offend and then going, oh, well, if this super changes, I'm not going to get out of jail and go back to my house. I'm going to get out of my jail and go back to government housing and you have to work and, and scratch and claw for everything I, I make. And unfortunately with most of these people being narcissistic, unfortunately they go to court and they go to jail thinking that they're still innocent. But once you start hitting someone's pocket, that's when people go, oh, maybe I did screw this up. I can safely say every offender I've gone against has not just a slight but a significant level of narcissism where, you know, how could they do this to me? Why are they suing me? You know, I was nothing but kind to them. I gave them toys. So, yeah, when you're grooming someone, you're doing, you're giving up items of possessions for your own gratification to get someone to trust you, to get someone to, to lower their guard. So I've never met a offender that I look at and think, oh, that guy seems like a normal everyday bloke. There's normally something that you can tell right away, the way they act, the way they talk. But yeah, it's, it's always narcissistic, it's always controlling. It's always someone that tries to deflect blame onto, onto other people. But you know, when, when you abuse a child, there's no one to blame except yourself. And that's the one thing that a lot of survivors come for. When they see me, they say, oh, you know, I feel bad coming forward, I feel bad suing him. And I'm like, no, that's, you know, it's 30 years after the fact and they still have this level of control on you. And it's never someone's fault that it happened. Their sexual related offenses are never anyone's fault. You see people saying, oh, but they wore different color panties or a low cut top. Bullshit. It's. You took advantage of someone for your own sexual gratification. The only person at fault for that is the offender.
- [23:35]
C
Absolutely. And the thing about, you know, what you were saying before, is it Andrew from Fighters Against Childhood Abuse Australia saying that he wants Australia to become the most dangerous place for people to abuse children? Is that the first thing I thought about when you said that is that it feels like we unfortunately punch above our weight in terms of producing sex offenders against children. It feels like, I don't know if that's real, but it feels like whenever they bust a big international ring of, you know, online offenders or, you know, it feels like why they're always. Australians feel like they're at the top of the tree of these things, you know. Yeah. Throughout the developing world, there's always Australians involved in these horrible situations.
- [24:20]
B
And it's, it's never someone busted with one photo. It's always someone busted with thousands. And you think with, with this supercharger, if someone has an image of a person and they lose their super, people start going, oh, okay, well you know, we need to stop that right away. Because you look at, say, say when people start committing crimes, if you, you rarely see a first time offender robbing it back.
- [24:50]
C
Yep.
- [24:50]
B
It'll be someone that, you know, starts stealing kinder surprises and then they move on to textbooks and then phones and then cars and it grows that way. A lot of these men, they have to start by doing something they'll access, access the dark web. And like you said, it's, it's always Australians that seem to be doing this and it's always tens of thousands of images. There was, there was a guy recently that he was found with 400,000 images. It's like, how, how can you.
- [25:18]
C
Yeah.
- [25:18]
B
And you start thinking if there's is some, there's a group of offenders out there and all of a sudden they, they realize that one of their friends has lost everything and not be able to enjoy his nesting that he's worked so hard for. And I say he, because almost, almost 100 of the people I've done have been male. So it's not sexism, it's just unfortunately my experience that people will start thinking, oh, maybe we shouldn't do that.
- [25:42]
C
It's.
- [25:42]
B
Yeah, when, when you do something wrong, you go, oh, I might get punished for this. But when you start going, oh, well who's going to find out? But then you go, oh, hang on, I could lose everything. I could go to jail, I could lose my house, I could lose my, my cars, my everything. And that's how it should be. It should be that we now need to finally make these people accountable for the horrendous crime they commit. And what they'll try to do with the criminal thing is they'll try to make it go to trial because they'll think that their survivors aren't brave enough to be cross examined. And being cross examined in your recounting the most traumatic thing in your life would be horrible because then people bring into question about your sexual history, about, you know, oh, well, you've, you've been arrested for stealing a chocolate bar. That's a dishonest thing. So you're a liar. People feed on the fact that these people won't come forward and that's why they, they try to go after a particular kind of person because it's a significant level of control. And you think when, when people start going, okay, well, I might not get found guilty in a court. But based on certain injuries that people sustain when they've been sexually abused, where a doctor can look at them and say, well, these, these signs are consistent with the sexual abuse, instead of 100% guilty on the civil side, you can convince a court that it happened. Something like this might trigger some people coming forward because they say, well, they might say that I've been silenced. I don't want to go through the criminal aspect. But the civil side is something, I can finally get a finding that something happened to me and get the redress I deserve. And it's, it's not going to have such a minuscule success rate as what a criminal side would have. And at least it's, it's actually forcing offenders to say, right, well, if you really want to go to court and, and air this out, your right to silence. Isn't there guys in the civil side, they do not enjoy that right to silence. They have to get up and run the exact same gauntlet like offenders do. Like you see, whenever a person is arrested for child sex related matters, they're almost instantaneously have a redacted identity. So they can still be out in the community, they can still be doing all kinds of stuff. But with the civil side, you know, you are named, your identity is out there and you now have to get up in front of a judge and you have to subject yourself to cross examination. And the one thing that narcissists hate is when they're put on task. And I have a very strong female barrister that I use and I guarantee you a narcissistic man against a strong woman will lose every day of the week.
- [28:16]
C
That's lawyer Andrew Carpenter and there's a link in our show notes and also on our Facebook page for you to find out more about this campaign and to sign the petition. Coming up, we hear from the other man at the forefront of the campaign and let's just say he's a very different energy to Andrew. Our next guest is Adam Washburn, who's the founder and president of an organisation called Fighters Against Child Abuse Australia. It's a very straightforward name and as you're about to discover, he's a very straightforward guy. Working with victim survivors of childhood sexual abuse is a very challenging job and it has a high burnout rate. But Adam's been Doing it for decades. He's a unique guy who does things his own way, and you only have to spend a little bit of time with him to understand why all sorts of people feel comfortable with him.
- [29:17]
D
So I think 12 years ago, almost to the day, we just started an organization of just loose people that were trying to help out kids who had survived abuse.
- [29:28]
A
How come?
- [29:29]
C
What brought you to this? Are you a survivor yourself?
- [29:31]
D
Well, I'm a counselor. Right. Initially, but essentially, it was just needed. I'm also a lifelong martial arts coach. I've been doing martial arts all my life, and I've been teaching from, like, 21. And so I would have a lot more success counseling kids who I would say, hold pads for or play basketball with or something physical where I could interact with them and have a chat while talking. And, you know, it just sort of evolved out of that idea. I know a lot of martial artists through the years, and I sort of said, hey, you know, if I could find a kid in your area that needed help, would you be willing to take them on? And, yeah, no worries. And they just. It was just a, you know, sort of attitude of giving back. And everyone that I spoke to wanted to help. And so, you know, my partner and I sat down and we worked out. We've got people here, here. You know, we might want to qualify them somehow. So we started checking, working with children checks. We started making sure they were qualified in terms of instruction. And then we would have people come to our Facebook page and just say, hey, you know, I'm in the Newcastle area. Do you have someone? And it'll be like, yeah, great. Go see this person. Tell them Adam sent you, and we'll take care of the bill. We'll take care of your uniform. Just go down and train and, you know, try and get it out. Have a chat, you know, with the instructors, martial arts coaches, the ones that we speak to make great mentors. And it really helps survivors of child abuse to come out of their shell. And then we sort of started just naturally expanding into other activities. Gymnastics, dance. We've now got music therapy offered in several Sydney suburbs. We've got, you know, a pro wrestling gym if. If that's what they're into. We've got so many different activities that they can go to. And then it just sort of grew organically out of that. The Facebook page kind of led to, hey, you've got to help us change the laws. We've started a legal reform campaign with literally, you know, my partner and I googling till 3 in the morning. Trying to work out how to do that. We got really lucky and found a committee had formed on the child sexual abuse laws in New South Wales. And so we put our first submission into that and went along to state parliament and spoke to the ideas that we had. And it just sort of evolved very organically. Now, you know, we've got an anti bullying program, we've got the legal reform program, we've got the Phoenix program, which is the survivors program. We've got a court support volunteer program. We've even got a court support staffer she built Terrier that can go along.
- [32:16]
C
Yeah, wonderful. Yeah.
- [32:18]
D
We flew up to Brisbane for a survivor once and went to court with her, which was really lucky because the system was not good. We ended up literally standing between her and her abuser in the line to get into the court and we're just going, this is mental. Why is this happening?
- [32:33]
C
You know, how does that happen?
- [32:34]
D
Yeah, yeah, it was, it was all very organic. And we've been going for 12 years now. We're pretty proud of what we've done. We're entirely volunteer run. All of the, all of the reps that we've got across the state, people that just want to help out locally, they're all volunteers. And yeah, it's just, it's just become pretty, pretty full on, but it's well worth it.
- [32:57]
C
It's only been recently that the language, the change of language has, I think, started to filter through. For example, you know, we're being told, don't call it child porn, you know, because it's not porn, it's child exploitation material. Can you talk to us about that?
- [33:15]
D
That was one of the things that we kept campaigning for over and over again. And we kept getting. Actually we, we'd send letters to the media and say, how come you're calling it child porn? And they'd hit us straight back with, because that's what the legislation says and that's what they were charged with. And that was true. But most states have now removed the words. Most states either call it child abuse material or child exploitation material, which is pretty. A pretty big step. It doesn't sound like much and people always say, oh, who cares what it's called? But yeah, exactly like you said, porn implies consent. Pornography is something done between two consenting or more adults that know exactly what they're there for. Children have no clue why they're there. They have no idea what's going on. And it's just either abuse or exploitation.
- [33:59]
C
Yeah. And so when the language is different, it Reminds everybody that every child involved is being exploited. It's a crime. It's a crime to watch it. By watching it, by viewing it, you are exploiting the child over and over. And that then the penalties need to be. Need to reflect that.
- [34:16]
D
Oh, absolutely. And the penalties right now are really, really low for child abuse material.
- [34:22]
C
Yeah.
- [34:22]
D
I think the maximum sentence is only 10 years in a lot of states and jurisdictions. And the worst part about our legal system is you can be done for possession and sharing, dissemination of thousands and thousands of files, and each one of those files is a real child being really abused. And you can get like 18 months. So you'll get the maximum sentence for one of those possessions. It's. That's insane.
- [34:53]
C
Yeah. And you're contributing to creating the market for these children to be procured and abused.
- [35:00]
D
Yeah, it's just the sentencing just doesn't reflect the crime at all.
- [35:04]
C
And so you're sort of. It feels like you're the engine room and you're the. Maybe the anchor for Andrew, he's a, he's a, he's a big energy and you're a very. You're a very cool energy.
- [35:16]
D
Yeah. Look, Andrew came to us with the idea for the, for the petition and for the legal reform. And I just said this, this can't be a thing. Like, surely they can't just stash all of their income in super and then declare bankruptcy and say, no, I don't owe you anything. And he's like, no, they can and they are. And the more we looked into it, the more we realized that was. It was going on, you know, the Peter Liddy example, the Maurice Van Ren examples. So when they get convicted, they can then. They then get sued civilly, which is great. And what we're finding is a lot of the ones with money are stashing it in their superannuation. And Andrew came to us with this idea and said, hey, let's do this. Can you, can you help me out? And I said, absolutely. And, you know, we put the charity behind it and we started raising awareness of it and things just sort of snowballed. People started reaching out to us, saying, hey, you know, we want to help out now. The Kylie Ryan Foundation's on board. We're pretty confident we're going to get it done. But Andrew was the driving force behind that particular legal reform campaign. And yeah, he's a powerhouse. I love him.
- [36:29]
A
He is.
- [36:29]
C
But, yeah, you know, I think we all need your calming energy, as you were just saying, your martial arts disciplined energy, which I Guess you know, for a lot of victim survivors, that that is very welcome.
- [36:43]
D
Yeah, I. Look, I'm lucky enough to be one of the teachers for Fighters Against Child Abuse, obviously, you know, and I'm lucky enough to get some of our clients come through, and I'm lucky enough to train them. And I always say lucky enough because that's why I do it, is to change lives. And you see them change before you, week to week. You see them come out of their shell. You see them start to get that confidence back, and, you know, they'll sweep you to the ground and they'll scream and they yell, and it's just great. And. And like you said, you know, my job is to stay calm and. And just relax through it. And, you know, you can never lose your cool with them because they are survivors and they've been through some serious trauma, you know, and a lot of people will be like, oh, what's going on? What are they doing? It's like, relax. It's all good. They're fine. They're just having a yell. It's cool. You see them change, and you see them grow, and you see them evolve, and then, you know, you see them leave, and it sounds really weird, but that's, like the best part, because they'll leave because they'll find a job or they'll leave because, you know, they're moving on, and you realize that you had a small part in that advancement. And it's just. Yeah, it's literally why I teach.
- [37:57]
C
That's incredible, because I would imagine that being even a counselor, which you were initially would have a short shelf life because it would be so draining. So, you know, you've got to give so much of yourself, but you've been doing this sort of work for a really long time. How long have you been doing this? In total counseling and then moving into this area.
- [38:17]
D
I went straight out of high school into counseling.
- [38:21]
B
Wow.
- [38:22]
D
It's. It was just what I wanted to do. You know, you grow up in a certain way and you see certain things, and you, you know, you want to give back, I guess, in a way that you were helped. And so now I grew up wanting to be a counselor, and I walked straight out of high school, straight into a Diploma of Community services at tafe, which led me straight into, you know, a uni and blah, blah, blah. So, God, I'd say 20 years I've been a counselor. Having said that, I don't. And this is just my experience. Right. I'm. I'm not gonna bag out. I Don't really see much value in the traditional model of counseling, especially for like complex post traumatic stress disorder, which is what you see quite frequently with child abuse. The sort of traditional method of counseling is great if there's already healing going on. You know, you can eat, you can guide someone through a trauma, if that makes sense, but you can't really expand on it and you kind of need to have, you know, psychiatric care, you sort of need to have other care structures in place.
- [39:34]
C
Yeah.
- [39:35]
D
And I find that what we do with Fakah, it's not, I'm not going to call it the best option. I'm going to say it's another option, especially for people who are at that stage where they're feeling angry, where they're, they're feeling, you know, shame, guilt, all of these emotions and they're not really dealing with them in a traditional manner to kind of sit that person down and say, so how did that make you feel? You're probably going to cop, well, how do you think it made me feel, mate? And when a faka client, I get emails and pictures and, you know, photos from all around Australia. When a faka client gets to a stage, they kind of want to help themselves, if that makes sense.
- [40:15]
A
It does.
- [40:16]
C
I was just about to ask you, Andrew's been talking to us about, about the lives that victim survivors often end up living because they can't work because of the medical issues. And all of that stuff is the indignity that they are left with oftentimes because of the financial situation that they're left with. And I was thinking, you know, when you just said that they get to a point hopefully ideally where they want to help themselves. I mean, I guess that's what he's trying to talk about too, is giving people back some dignity by giving them some financial redress.
- [40:51]
D
Absolutely. And that's kind of what we talk about a lot here for car is we try and break the cycle. Now, we're not referring to they're going to reoffend and hurt more kids because that just doesn't go on as much as everyone thinks it does. What we're referring to is exactly what Andrew was talking about. The cycle of. They don't live up to their potential, they end up on welfare, they end up, you know, Centrelink appointments, which is really degrading. As someone who's been unemployed, it's really hard to.
- [41:24]
C
Yeah.
- [41:25]
D
And when these people have already traumatized, to be re traumatized by a system over and over again and told, look, you're down There somewhere. And that's part of the, you know, if they can achieve that financial freedom, they can achieve that sense of empowerment. They can say, hey, you're not going to hold that power over me anymore. I'm not going to be that, that low scumbag or whatever that you said I was. And here's how. Thank you very much. You know, that's definitely part of what we want to do with Faka. We want to break the cycle. We want to empower the survivors to reach their potential, to live their lives, you know, away from a life of psychiatric appointments, away from a life. I mean, look, don't get me wrong, money won't heal trauma. No, it's that simple. But it will go a long way to empower them. It will go a long way to pick them up and help them rise up themselves.
- [42:20]
C
Yeah, well, you know, as we've been saying with Andrew, it just, it feels like everyone who hears about this idea says, of course, it's a no brainer. As we were saying to him, you know, they're very quick to strip the assets from a drug dealer or, you know, anyone they've caught participating in organized crime of any kind. So why not?
- [42:42]
D
Yeah, absolutely. And. And that's the thing. Originally, it started as an idea not to take their super and leave them broke. What it was was an idea that say, you got 400,000, well, you pay us what you can and what's left over, we'll take out of your super. So they couldn't just go, no, I got nothing. Like, here's 50 grand, go away. You know, it was an idea to top up so that they weren't left without an ability to pay because they were using Bankruptcy act and they were using the superannuation clause to avoid paying in the civil. And in 2018, it went through the finance minister, Kelly O'Dwyer literally made an announcement, we're doing this. We are making these changes. And then nothing. Because like you said, everyone says, this is a great idea. Why isn't this happening? And, yeah, even the Finance Minister then said, yep, we're doing this. Sorry. The Minister for Superannuation, I believe, said, we're doing this. It's done. And she had an announcement. She had, you know, several advocates with her. She had a couple of the survivors with her when she made the announcement.
- [43:49]
C
Oh, God.
- [43:50]
D
And then just, yeah, got lost in the shadows, I guess.
- [43:56]
C
Is there anything bloody worse than enjoying the fanfare of the announcement and then not doing it? The only thing worse than that is actually having survivors with you. For the photo call.
- [44:07]
D
Yeah.
- [44:07]
C
Like, that sucks.
- [44:08]
D
Yeah. Yeah. When we. When Andrew first approached us, we Googled it and we could see the fanfare and the, you know, Kelly O'Dwyer making changes and we're just sitting there going, and you didn't do it. Like, all you had to do was just tip it over the line.
- [44:28]
C
What happened? Something literally sign something that's. That's wrong.
- [44:32]
D
Yeah. Sign the bit of paper. But you didn't do it.
- [44:34]
C
Yeah.
- [44:35]
D
And, yeah, apparently treasury say. Oh, it's a complex issue. If you ask Andrew, he can literally quote word for word how to do it in about two sentences.
- [44:45]
C
Yeah.
- [44:45]
A
It's not that complex.
- [44:46]
C
And covert has taught us that, you know, when they need to.
- [44:51]
D
Yeah.
- [44:52]
C
You know.
- [44:52]
D
Yeah. When you need to get stuff done, you can. Yeah. You'd think that the fanfare and the big announcement would make. Create a need for it to get done, but, yeah, they got the photo.
- [45:09]
A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org AU. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org AU.
- [45:41]
D
The producers of this podcast recognise the
- [45:44]
B
traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded.
- [45:49]
D
They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.