Smaller World

[dalekboy]

Just got back from wandering the Giralang shops with my better camera (but no tripod). Pictures will be up when I find time.

On the way back I walked past the soccer field and there were a bunch of kids playing and being coached. The field was lovely, the kids seemed to be having fun, and in the distance between the trees, the Telstra tower was lit orange by the setting sun. It would have been a gorgeous photo.

Five years ago.

But of course, in this day and age, I couldn't afford to take it.

Someone may have seen the guy on the footpath with the camera and decided I'm obviously a paedophile, because the only people who could ever have wanted to record a scene like that would be fiends and perverts. No ordinary person could derive pleasure from such shot - children playing at sunset with a solid Canberra icon in the background.

Someone may have made the accusation, and with no prior record or any evidence more substantial than a person worrying about someone standing in open view taking a photo of kids rugged up against the cold and playing sport, I would be investigated. Our computers would be confiscated (usually returned damaged, even if there is not a shred of proof of wrong-doing), friends questioned, and the fact that I play Father Christmas would probably work against me, even though there has never been the slightest concern regarding my conduct with any child. I'm considered one of the company's best Santas.

Oh, and chances are I would have to move out, leaving my 73 year old mum to try and care of my son all day long (which would not be good for either of them), or my son would be taken away from us while the investigation took place.

After months of investigation, even after being found completely innocent, there would still be people who looked at me askance. Because there's no smoke without fire, apparently. Oh and I wouldn't be allowed to play Santa again, because it would be recorded that I was investigated, and that's enough to stop me being allowed to play the part.

Meanwhile, I'm assuming that most of the perverts who have any sense are buying camera glasses and pinhole cameras and getting their pictures that way.

For the rest of us, well, the world gets just that little bit smaller and less colourful as the illusion of safety is maintained for the masses.

It's all really rather a shame, as it would have been a beautiful photo.

Comments

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

You're right not to give every detail, of course, just in case someone's able to identify the people involved. That said, I'm not clear how closely these three peoples' experiences match your scenario of "man takes innocent photo, life ruined by suspicious stranger". Accusations made during a heated child custody battle aren't really an example of public paranoia. (Again, since you know the folks involved and I don't, I take your word for what happened in these cases. But if I had come across a similar story elsewhere on the net, I know I'd be curious about the ex-partner's version of events.)

[(Anonymous)]

[GregT] I work with the courts. The fact is that there are a large number of nuisance litigants of dubious mental health who take up a disproportionate amount of the system's time making unfounded and ridiculous allegations that have to be investigated because everyone will look foolish if they turn up their nose at the one time it turns out to be for real. On top of that, there honestly is a massive amount of fabrication and exaggeration that goes on in and around family law proceedings (on the sides of both genders). A parent who honestly feels like their children will be worse-off living with the ex, and who is subject to a lot of stress and emotion as a result of a terrible break-up, can sometimes not care about the means if the end is the perceived protection of their children.

And then there's the additional problems required by compulsory reporting obligations on some professions - where suspicions are required to be reported regardless of whether they're well-founded to avoid a criminal liability for not reporting them - and then an additional reservoir of people who've joined P&C organisations, religious communities, or sport and other children's extracurricular activity groups because of social isolation and will over-report as a way of creating drama and importance for their own lives.

It's an open question as to whether ten false positives are worthwhile to avoid one false negative but it's indisuptable that there *are* a very large number of false positives generated as a result of the (at least partly well-founded) cultural and legislative paranoia over child abuse and molestation.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

The problem is that with a portion of the false positives is they can do serious damage to the life of the accused.

You can't protect the innocent by punishing innocent.

With regards to compulsory reporting, there's not much that can be done, just as nothing can be done about the person with honest suspicions. But when it's a case of one person accusing another, and it's then found to be a deliberate falsehood, I'd like them to be fined for the wages of all the personnel who worked on the case.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I dispute it thus:

http://www.xyonline.net/Falseaccusationsabuse.shtml
http://www.kidsindistress.org.au/false-allegations.php
http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/resreport15/chapter3.html

Of course, it depends on your definition of "large number", but it seems that the majority of allegations made in Australia are substantiated.

ETA: Those are all studies of divorce and custody. I'll see if I can find some figures for allegations made in other circumstances.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

I love your google-fu :)

Interestingly, when I think about false accusations, I don't tend to think of divorce or custody battles. So I'd be very, very interested in your findings on other accusations.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Well, it'd be nice to be able to reassure you that peeps aren't as paranoid about paedophiles as you perhaps primarily perceived. :)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Dug up some stuff:

Stats from Victoria on the number of abuse notifications. In 2007, less than a third of all notifications were investigated, of which around half were substantiated. Sexual abuse notifications were the smallest category; about half of them were investigated, and about a third of those investigated were substantiated. This does not paint a picture of nervous teachers, doctors, etc rushing off at the drop of a hat to report suspected paedophiles - nor of child protection workers whipping out the binoculars and bugs at the slightest report.

A 2004 AIHW report includes data on who makes notifications. The overwhelming majority of notifications which were investigated came from police, school personnel, medical personnel, and parents, guardians, and relatives. The report also shows that a large proportion of notifications aren't investigated; in NSW, for example, there were far more cases "dealt with by other means", such as "referral to police, referral to family services or provision of advice". So again, this doesn't paint a picture of paranoia and persecution.

As this is all very serious, I'd like to conclude by noting that Frank the cat was sitting on top of my monitor as I was typing it, and at one point he nodded off and fell on the keyboard.

[(Anonymous)]

[GregT] Stats to the rescue! I feel chastened by having my anecdotes rightfully rebutted by statistics.

Although I don't feel the statistics prove me wrong. Substantiation in the Victorian numbers seems to refer to substantiation in the opinion of the investigator; we see that more than 70% of notifications don't merit investigation, we see that roughly a third to a half of investigated notifications turn out to be unmeritorious (so 1 in 3 of those investigated are investigated falsely), and of those deemed "substantiated" less than half go on to any formal court action.

The numbers don't provide stats for how many investigations result in prosecutions but my guess would be it's an order of magnitude lower again - somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the "substantiated" claims, of which probably 20 to 30 percent result in convictions.

Those are terrible numbers. It means roughly 1 in 10 claims of child abuse are capable of satisfying the civil standard of proof and a vastly lower number are capable of satisfying the criminal standard. It means we're severely impact the lives of at least two falsely accused (and families) for every one correct identification, and it's vastly worse when we look at prosecutions and convictions.

Some of that's to do with some vast inadequacies in our systems for prosecuting sexual assaults; the conviction rate on matters that reach trial really should be around about 80% and the difference isn't from the innocence of the accused but from some deficiencies in the jury system and in the evidence rules around tendancy and course of conduct evidence.

The numbers are alarming chiefly by contrast to other causes of crime. For murder, for burglary, for fraud, you're exceptionally unlikely to be falsely accused of one of these crimes without some connection to the actual crime itself. Child molestation and child sexual assault are notable because the false positives are distributed more or less randomly throughout the community. Rather than having got "the wrong guy" they largely involve having got a guy for a crime that didn't occur. That's coupled with the fact that Australia doesn't have an "acquitted" verdict in the style of the Scottish system - here a "Not Guilty" verdict (relatively easy to get in sexual offence cases) only rises as high as, "We couldn't prove it was you, but it still probably was."

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I think you're making an unwarranted assumption here: that if a notification was not investigated by child protection services, that's because it didn't merit investigation (and was therefore the product of madness, malice, or paranoia). As you'll see if you run your eye over that second link, that isn't the case.

Firstly, child protection services fail to investigate all notifications which merit it. This is in the papers all the time, especially when incompetence, beauracy, or just simple lack of staff and resources results in a child's death.

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LC20030701046
http://www.kidsindistress.org.au/files/dead-two-children-the-system-failed.php

Secondly, as I mentioned, a large number of genuine notifications are dealt with in ways other than investigation. Also, some notifications cannot be investigated. As a footnote in the AIHW report states: "'No investigation possible/no action' includes notifications where there were no grounds for an investigation or insufficient information was available to undertake an investigation. It may also include some cases that were referred on or where advice was given which cannot be disaggregated from cases with insufficient reason to investigate."

Thirdly, the definition of "notification" and "investigation" actually varies from state to state: as the AIHW report notes, "In Victoria, for example, the definition of a notification is very broad and may include family issues that are responded to without the need for a formal investigation process." So in Victoria, only 34% of notifications were investigated, while in WA, 96% were.

So, while the figures don't suggest a crazy system in which innocents are hounded on flimsy evidence, neither do they support the idea that family members, teachers, police, and doctors and nurses are inventing or imagining cases of abuse.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

The accusation made by one parent against another in this case wasn't during a heated custody battle, they never had one of those.

The accusation only happened when the ex got a new man in her life, and supposedly later admitted to wanting him to 'feel like the only dad' to the kid.

People are fucked.

I know of one false accusation that was acted on, but only because the complainer was found to be up to shonky stuff. Generally they get a warning.