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University of Technology Sydney Law Research Series |
Last Updated: 25 September 2017
Monsters and Horror in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses
to Child Sexual Abuse
Penny Crofts, Faculty of Law,
UTS
ABSTRACT: This article analyses how the Australian Royal
Commission into Institutional Reponses to Child Sexual Abuse negotiates the
figure
of the paedophile as monster through the horror genre.
This article
analyses the resonance of the category of paedophiles as monsters or monstrous
and the ways in which this impacted upon
witnesses’ responses to sex
offenders, based on assumptions that monsters are outsiders or strangers that
are instantly recognisable.
I go on to explore the claim that one of the main
effects of regarding sex offenders as monsters is that these offenders are
construed
as having extraordinary powers so that ordinary measures to stop them
would be ineffective—accordingly, this reading underplays
the significance
of institutional responsibility. I conclude that although the Royal Commission
consistently undermines and rejects
the idea of sex offenders as monsters, a
horror reading is still appropriate and insightful. The true
“horror” of the
Royal Commission is aroused not by the figurative
monsters but by the institutions themselves, and their
failures.
KEYWORDS: Sexual abuse, Systemic failure, Royal
Commission, Monster, Horror
INTRODUCTION
The idea of
the paedophile as monster is so common that it is the subject not only of
academic analysis, but also of self-reflexive
media reports criticising media
representations of paedophiles as
monsters.[1] This article analyses how
the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Reponses to Child Sexual
Abuse negotiates the figure
of the paedophile as monster. I consider the ways in
which the notion of paedophiles as monsters or monstrous inform a number of
the
witness statements and the ways the Royal Commission navigates those
constructions. I will examine how the notion of the monstrous
paedophile has
intersected with the criminal law in terms of the implications for intervention,
enforcement and responsibility.
I use monster theory and the genre with which
monsters are most closely related, horror, to understand the paedophile.
Analysis of
the figure through the horror genre, in particular, makes available
an interrogation of the construction of paedophiles as monsters
and proffers
insights into the negotiation of this figure by the Royal Commission.
The
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse commenced in
2013 and has recently been extended to continue
until the end of
2017.[2] At the time of writing, the
Royal Commission has undertaken 56 public hearings, and held more than 6,400
private sessions with victim/survivors
of child sexual abuse, with more than
2,000 people awaiting private sessions. The formal public hearings examine
evidence about child
sexual abuse and how institutions have (not) responded to
allegations of abuse. The public hearings can be accessed by the public
and are
also telecasted live on the web, the transcripts are available on the website
and the findings are then summarised in Reports.
The Royal Commission has
considered child sexual abuse in a wide range of institutions including schools,
after-school care, religious
organisations, the Australian Defence Force, the
entertainment industry, sporting clubs, and health care providers. The Royal
Commission
has generated a huge archive with hundreds of thousands of pages of
transcripts, reports, publications and findings all of which
are available on
the Royal Commission website. Whilst the data is readily available on the
website it is not easily searched. Terms
cannot be entered to search the whole
website – rather, each individual Report and transcripts from particular
days need to
be searched individually. In order to limit the data this article
focuses primarily on the Final Reports of public hearings of selected
case
studies – which include quotations from witnesses and findings by the
Royal Commission. I have supplemented these sources
with quotations from
transcripts of the public hearings and also media responses to the public
hearings. I have read all the Final
Reports and selected particular stories as
representative of general themes highlighted throughout the Royal Commission
Reports.
Although the Royal Commission has considered historical examples of
institutional failures to respond to abuse, this article focuses
particularly on
Royal Commission Reports of institutional failures in the twenty-first century.
I have chosen these reports to disrupt
the comforting notion that institutional
failures in response to child sexual abuse arose in the distant past and have
since been
resolved.
There are various ways in which child sex
offenders can be conceived and constructed (for example as ordinary offenders or
mentally
ill), but currently they are frequently labelled and regarded as
monsters.[3] For example, in his
analysis of sex offending, Thomas argued that in an explosion of media interest
paedophiles became thoroughly
demonised as ‘monsters’ –
‘evil’, ‘beasts’, and
‘fiends’.[4] Silverman and
Wilson have argued that with the new millennium, paedophiles and terrorists are
the ‘bogey men’ of contemporary
times.[5] Monsters are the stuff of
fiction, and are particularly associated with the horror
genre.[6] Accordingly, I explore the
ways in which the horror genre can provide insight into the ways in which the
Royal Commission navigates
the figure of the paedophile as a monster, and the
implications of their dealings. This idea of studying the Royal Commission
through
the prism of horror is part of a larger cultural legal studies project
of examining popular culture for how it reflects and expresses
assumptions,
values and wishes for and about the legal
system.[7] Given the centrality of
monsters to the horror genre, I rely upon horror stories to enrich and
problematize the labelling of sex
offenders as monsters. This is consistent with
a classic law and literature approach whereby stories are relied upon to
supplement
and provide insight into the
law.[8] The Royal Commission itself
ostensibly reflects and reinforces a faith in storytelling with an open
invitation to survivors and their
families to tell their stories of abuse and
its impacts – in private and public
hearings.[9] Within the discipline of
law and literature, however, there has been a critique of the
‘romantic’ myth that literature
is thought to complete law and an
excessive faith in narrative.[10]
The Royal Commission’s handling of the stories of victims reflects an
understanding that stories, in and of themselves, are
not
enough.[11] Whilst there may be
underlying assumptions of the cathartic nature of storytelling, the Royal
Commission has gone beyond this to
categorise and organise the stories into
structural themes and issues regarding institutional failure with the aim of
identifying
areas for reform.
Further, my method is also informed by the
recent turn in law and literature to genre as a form of critique of the
law.[12] The concept of genre is
itself complex and open to debate. Genre has been variously described as a
‘signal system’,[13]
family resemblance,[14] or
pragmatically as the process of where we shelve a book or how we market a film.
A key point is that genre raises and imposes assumptions
and expectations of
what and how a text communicates, and our interpretation in turn is a product of
our assumptions about the generic
tradition on which the text
relies.[15] Rosmarin describes genre
as ‘a kind of schema, a way of discussing a literary text in ways that
link it with other texts, and
finally, phrase it in terms of those
texts...’[16] This approach
highlights the power of the reader (or critic) to categorise and interpret a
text as part of a genre. It has been criticised
by some theorists as according
too much power to the reader,[17]
but it has the advantage of revealing the construction of ‘specific
worlds’ with their own ‘definition of space,
time, moral ethos and
players’[18] and how worlds,
including legal worlds, are created and
maintained.[19] Here genre is
understood not merely as a stylistic ‘device’ but as constituting
ways of being.[20]
Genre can
provide a means for awareness and critique of how the Reports of the Royal
Commission can be read, and a different mode
of interpretation. This kind of
critique helps people ‘begin to have trouble thinking things the way they
have been thought’[21] and
experience dissonance.[22] This
literary approach can make us aware of how we are disciplined to separate sense
and sensibility.[23] Royal
Commissions are a curious genre in and of themselves. Royal commissions are
frequently used in Australia, Canada and Great
Britain to investigate political
wrongdoing and to make recommendations regarding policy and law reform. Although
extraordinary modes
of inquiry, Royal Commissions are a regular feature of
government administration in Australia and
Canada.[24] Royal Commissions have
all the trappings of law and yet are quasi-judicial. They are informed by law,
can include recommendations
for prosecutions and law reform, and tend to be
populated by judicial officers. The lexicon of a Royal Commission is legal
–
particularly in terms of hearings and findings – and the hearings
reflect the physical architecture of a courtroom and are
often held in existing
courtrooms. However, the Royal Commission is entitled to ask questions that go
beyond those permitted by,
or even conceived of as relevant to, the
law.[25]
The current Royal
Commission has aroused horror through its unveiling of past and present
wrongdoing.[26] The question is
whether anything is achieved by this recounting of horrors. The Royal Commission
has provided a report on the sheer
number of inquiries on institutional abuse
that have been conducted historically and in recent times, which have ostensibly
accomplished
little or nothing.[27]
The non-implementation of recommendations is the most consistent criticism of
Royal Commissions.[28] I draw upon
the horror genre to accomplish a critical reading of the Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child Sexual
Abuse to uncover that which we take to
be self-evident – how and why we read, listen to and/or watch the Royal
Commission.[29] Constructing the
Royal Commission as horror reverses or undoes the Royal Commission genre, making
us aware of how specific expectations,
interpretations and literacies underlie
and undergird our readings. Royal Commissions tend to be evaluated in terms of
function
– does a particular Royal Commission serve political ends to
avert a crisis or does it present a meaningful opportunity to
change policy and
practice?[30] This article puts the
affect of horror at the centre of an analysis of the Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child
Abuse. I consider whether or not the horror
genre may offer hope for reform, whereby the arousal of the affect of horror
justifies
and requires change. The Royal Commission need not, of course, be read
as horror. For example, an alternative approach is suggested
by Slaughter, who
reads human rights through the genre of melodrama, arguing that it constructs
audiences who understand themselves
as bystanders who are ‘capable of
feeling compassion without
fear’.[31]
The
boundaries of the horror genre are open to dispute. The horror genre takes many
different forms, and fans may favour one particular
style over another (such as
slasher versus zombie), there are however two key attributes associated with the
genre. First, the genre
is named for the emotional or physiological response it
is intended to arouse – horror. The Oxford English Dictionary defines
horror as ‘a painful emotion compounded of loathing and fear; a shuddering
with terror and repugnance; the feeling excited
by something shocking or
frightful... a thrill of awe, or of imaginative fear.’ Whilst there are
other breakdowns of the affect/s
the horror genre is expected to
generate,[32] and different horror
stories privilege different affects, for the purposes of this analysis
Carroll’s assertion that horror
is a mixture of fear and disgust is
pertinent.[33] The aim of horror is
the arousal of bodily sensation – to label a horror ‘good’
means that it is scary and creepy.
Second, the horror genre is particularly
associated with monsters.[34] I will
consider the attributes of monsters in more detail throughout this paper, but
note now that central to the construction of
the monstrous in the horror genre
is the transgression of the borders of humanity – a disturbance of the
‘natural order’.[35] The
fear and fascination of monsters, so central to the arousal of horror, is due to
their potential to contaminate and undermine
systems of
order.[36] Not all horror movies
have monsters – sometimes it is humans doing particularly evil or
monstrous things – and it is
open to dispute as to whether as a
consequence of these evil actions the villain is a
monster.[37] Moreover, many horror
stories do not necessarily arouse horror. There are many ‘horror’
series on television currently
that are populated by monsters which are not
really scary, especially for aficionados of
horror.[38] Despite this, devotees
(as well as those utterly horrified by the horror genre) are confident in their
own definitions and expectations
of the
genre.[39]
Below, I
consider, first, the resonance generally of the category of monster and the
affect of horror associated with sex offenders.
Second, I consider the ways that
attributes of monsters impacted upon witnesses’ responses to sex offenders
in the Royal Commission,
based on assumptions that monsters are outsiders or
strangers that are instantly recognisable. I go on to explore the claim that
one
of the main effects of regarding sex offenders as monsters is that these
offenders are construed as having extraordinary powers
so that ordinary measures
to stop them would be ineffective—accordingly, this reading underplays the
significance of institutional
responsibility. I conclude that although the Royal
Commission consistently undermines and rejects the idea of sex offenders as
monsters,
a horror reading is still appropriate and insightful. The true
“horror” of the Royal Commission is aroused not by the
figurative
monsters but by the institutions themselves, and their failures.
THE
HORROR OF MONSTROUS PAEDOPHILES
The premise of this article is to
explore the implications of the construction of sex offenders as monsters by
witnesses in the Royal
Commission. As far as I can ascertain from the searches
through some of the hundreds of thousands of pages of transcripts and reports
generated by the Royal Commission, witnesses do not explicitly label sex
offenders ‘monsters’. They do, however, invoke
the language of
monstrosity: they speak of sex offenders as ‘evil’ and/or
‘predators’. For example, a mother
told the Royal Commission that
she had told a bishop that her sons thought Ryan was
‘evil’,[40] and she had
threatened to shoot Ryan or ‘any other evil priest if they came near my
sons or my home’.[41]
Offenders were described as
‘predators’[42] a
‘dangerous sexual
predator’,[43] or as a
‘horrendous evil’[44] or
having an ‘evil
character’[45] and
‘predatory
inclinations’.[46] Another
witness stated she thought ‘evil rides around the
church’[47] or decried the
‘abhorrent and evil
behaviour’[48] of the
offender.[49] These descriptions of
sex offenders as evil predators is consistent with monsters – human/beasts
transgressing the lines between
good and evil, human and animal. In horror,
monsters are portrayed as evil malevolent beings who wish only to do us harm
(think pretty
much any monster). Despite the absence of explicit labelling of
paedophiles as monsters by witnesses in the Royal Commission, the
media
reporting of the Royal Commission has sustained a portrayal of paedophiles as
monsters, with headlines such as ‘Friendly
priest became paedophile
“monster”’,[50]
‘Evil, depraved monster
paedophile’,[51] and
‘Gerald Ridsdale: portrait of a monster as a forgetful old
man’.[52]
The
construction of paedophiles as monsters or monstrous has been linked to an
accompanying shift in how sex offending was portrayed
in popular discourse from
the 1990s onwards, when popular discourse shifted from child sexual abuse to
increasingly focus on the
figure of the paedophile, who was constructed as a
highly dangerous stranger who attacks, sexually abuses and possibly kills
children.[53] The media frequently
portrays sex offenders in a way that is sensationalistic and demonises
offenders.[54] The language used is
frequently consistent with the construction of sex offenders as monsters.
Epithets used to describe paedophiles
in the media include evil, fiend,
predator, demons, perverts and
monsters.[55] Like monsters,
paedophiles are constructed as a threat. They are deviant, abnormal, predatory
and perverted. The media focuses on
a small number of convicted
offenders.[56] They are presented as
a distinct and dangerous category, as a separate species, sub-human or a
‘breed apart’.[57] Like
monsters, paedophiles are conceptualised as outside society with people refusing
to accept sex offenders who have served jail
time back into their
community.[58]
Labelling
paedophiles as monsters resonates in part due to the transgression of
boundaries. Monsters are represented in horror and
conceptualised in philosophy
as beyond understanding, as incomprehensible to human beings. For example,
Foucault explicitly considered
the production of monsters in Abnormal:
Essentially, the monster is the casuistry that is necessarily introduced into
law by the confusion of nature... it is a monster only
because it is also a
legal labyrinth, a violation of and an obstacle to the law, both transgression
and undecidability at the level
of the
law.[59]
For Foucault, the
production of monsters should be understood as a double breach of nature and
law, they ‘combine the impossible
and the
forbidden’.[60] Monsters
generate fear and fascination because they not only break rules and cross
borders, but because they also challenge the border
itself, by being both and
neither one thing and another.[61]
Monsters resist and refuse easy categorization. They are disturbing hybrids that
refuse to participate in the classificatory ‘order
of things’,
problematizing and challenging classifications built on hierarchy or binary
oppositions.[62] They embody and
unleash the chaos that exists on the other side of cultural boundaries. Monsters
break apart the ‘either/or’
syllogistic logic with a kind of
reasoning closer to ‘and/or’. For example, vampires are the living
dead – they
are neither/both dead and alive.
The specific border
changes from story to story, but the function of the monster remains the same
– ‘to bring about an
encounter between the symbolic order and that
which threatens its
stability.’[63] In some
stories, the monstrous is produced at the border between life and death (vampire
and zombie stories), the normal and the
supernatural (The Exorcist
[1973], The Omen [1976], The Nightmare on Elm Street series,
Stranger Things [2016]), between human and beast (Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde). Paedophiles are regarded as having transgressed a boundary erected by
law and society between adults and children. Adults having
sex with children is
against the law and arguably against nature (in accordance with Foucault’s
definition of the monster).
By breaching this rule, sex offenders have crossed
the border of humanity – having this ‘evil’ and
‘perverted’
desire and acting upon it is regarded as unimaginable
and outside the realms of humanity. Moreover, the transgressions of child sex
offenders undermine the accepted roles and boundaries between adults and
children. Not only do paedophiles actively harm children,
they also interrogate
the role of those adults who failed to protect children from sex offenders.
According to Foucault, each age had its ‘privileged monster’
– the bestial human in the Middle Ages, Siamese or
conjoined twins in the
Renaissance and the hermaphrodite in the Classical
Age.[64] Monsters are historically
conditioned rather than psychological
universals,[65] and much of
contemporary horror revolves around a concern for and breach of sexual
boundaries.[66]
The release of sexuality in the horror film is always presented as perverted,
monstrous and excessive, both the perversion and the
excess being the logical
outcome of
repressing.[67]
Arguably,
paedophiles are ‘privileged monsters’ due to the breaching of sexual
boundaries. However, although children
feature in horror, they are rarely
explicitly portrayed as victims of sexual abuse. Child sex offenders are almost
never portrayed
in horror stories, possibly due to the taboo of such a lowbrow
genre representing such a serious and taboo
subject,[68] and/or perhaps due to a
contemporary perception of sex offenders as real-life monsters who disrupt the
comforting contract with audiences
of horror fiction that the monsters, whilst
scary, are not real.
Only some individuals or groups are at any
historical moment demonised by the term monster. Heroes, like Superman,
Spiderman and Doctor
Who are also unnatural and inexplicable, yet they are not
labelled monsters.[69] Accordingly,
there is more to a monster than the transgression of laws and classificatory
systems. In defining the horror genre,
one of the most important characteristics
are the modes of affect that horror films intend to arouse in audiences, the
arousal of
fear and disgust. Sex offenders return us to archetypal fears of
childhood of the bogeyman and of adults who are not what they
seem.[70] The word
‘monstrous’ is used to imply very large size – and the image
of the sex offender plays on fears of a large
threat looming over a child. Sex
offenders encapsulate the adult anxiety of a child going missing, that heart
stopping moment of
taking one’s gaze away for a moment and losing a child.
Sex offenders also arouse disgust. Disgust is not just a reactionary
conservatism,[71] but the emotional
expression of a moral intolerance of practices antithetical to the individual
and the community.[72] In his
masterful analysis, Miller argues that disgust is a moral and social sentiment
that conveys a ‘strong sense of aversion
to something perceived as
dangerous because of its powers to contaminate, infect, or pollute by proximity,
contact, or ingestion.’[73]
Miller describes disgust as an emotion that initially expresses the protection
of the body but develops into the protection of the
soul. For example, humans
first express disgust in response to hair in the mouth, but the lexicon of
disgust develops to express
moral opprobrium. The language of disgust can be
used to express the horror of eating food that we discover too late contains a
cockroach
and then transferred to express repugnance of sex offenders and sex
offending. Carroll has argued that monsters are something that
humans do not
want to have contact with – we recoil from them and feel nauseated by
them, even when the threat of harm has
been removed. They ‘make
one’s skin creep’.[74]
Monsters arouse the affect of horror because of their capacity and
willingness to inflict harm. Through their actions they maim, destroy,
contaminate and spoil that which is good. For example, vampires suck the life
out of their victims. Once infected, victims of vampires
and zombies lose all
interest in that for which they previously cared. They are taken away from
themselves.
Disgust never allows us to escape clean. It underpins the sense of despair
that impurity and evil are contagious and endure, and take
everything down with
them.[75]
Sex offenders can
inflict serious physical, mental and social harms to victims. Every report of
the Royal Commission devotes some
time to enunciating the harm done to the
victims (and their families) by the sex offender. These harms include physical
and psychological
problems, including depression and anxiety. It can affect
relationships with family members, friends and partners. The trauma can
impact
on employment history and prospects. For example, in the case study on the
response of the Australian Christian Churches to
allegations of sexual abuse,
the Report notes that the District Court judge sentencing the sex offender noted
that his impact on
the victim was
‘catastrophic’.[76] The
victim spoke of the effect of the offender on his life in terms consistent with
the lexicon of horror:
The pain, thoughts and considerable suffering haunts me every day. People say
it gets easier with time: no. That’s a lie, it
never goes away and
doesn’t get easier with
time.[77]
Extreme disgust can
fill us with a sense of being haunted. It is contaminating and
infectious—that which is disgusting has almost
magical powers of
invasiveness and duration.[78] The
language used by witnesses in the Royal Commission is consistent with the
lexicon of disgust, for example sex abusers are ‘too
revolting’ for
committing ‘such hideous
crimes’.[79] In apologising
for his and the School’s failure to respond, one former principal
stated:
This Royal Commission has revealed the horrific extent of Trutmann's sordid
and predatory sexual abuse of at least 40 young students
in the Geelong Grammar
School Highton Boarding House and elsewhere between 1985 and 1996. It has been a
disturbing and sickening
revelation to
me.[80]
The word
‘horrific’ is an offshoot of horror. The physical, visceral response
of ‘sickening’ is consistent
with disgust. A victim of abuse
asserted that, as a result of the abuse, ‘the past ten years of my life
have been a living
hell.’[81]
In the Royal Commission Reports, the harm inflicted intentionally by sex
offenders is described in terms reminiscent of horror. While
not being
explicitly labelled monsters in the Royal Commission, the great emphasis upon
the harms inflicted are consistent with the
idea of sex offenders as monsters,
as evil predators who arouse horror due to the intentional infliction of lasting
harm. However,
as I argue in the final section of this article, the wider scope
of the Royal Commission’s investigations, and, its particular
concern with
the role of institutions in facilitating abuse, significantly contributes to the
characterization of institutions themselves
as monstrous.
STRANGERS AND OUTSIDERS
In contrast to the approach of the Royal Commission itself, the conceptualisation of sex offenders as monsters by witnesses in the Royal Commission is more explicit (and dangerous). A key attribute of monsters is that they are outsiders. This is in part because their infliction of harm upon others locates them beyond the borders of humanity, but also because of an assumption that monsters are strangers – they come from somewhere else, they are not like you and me. In many horror stories, a monstrous stranger or outsider threatens the family.[82] Strangers have tormented the family in fictions such as Poltergeist, American Horror Series 1, It, The Shining, The Exorcist and the A Nightmare on Elm Street series.[83] The genre represents a threat from outside disrupting the safety of the family (and frequently the family home).[84]
This construction of the paedophile as monster is misleading because it directs the focus to stranger danger. The media tends to focus on a few high profile cases of abuse – and these are almost always cases involving strangers.[85] This augments a belief that the primary threat comes from outside the family or familiar structures, and that the threat emanates from a stranger. In the Royal Commission, this idea of stranger danger presents and is disrupted in different ways. In Case Study Number 18, for example, the offender, Baldwin, married into the family of Doctor Lehmann, the senior pastor of the Sunshine Church. As a consequence of this familial relationship, Doctor Lehmann failed to adequately respond to complaints about Youth Pastor Baldwin’s inappropriate behaviour with the victim, ALA. In addition to complaints and reports by other staff, including senior leaders of the Church, Doctor Lehmann was personally aware of some of Baldwin’s inappropriate behaviour including that Baldwin had an ‘intense’ relationship with ALA, Baldwin frequently segregated ALA from others, wanted to give a large number of awards to ALA, had proposed purchasing ALA an expensive present, and had been alone with ALA in his car.[86] Doctor Lehmann asserted that despite these warnings, he failed to protect ALA from Baldwin because Baldwin was his son-in-law.
When I sit down and have a meal with him, share a bottle of red wine with him, I don’t think I’m doing this with a paedophile.[87]
Despite Baldwin being convicted of ten charges, at the time of the Royal Commission Doctor Lehmann still did not accept that Baldwin was a paedophile, stating:
I’m not saying he didn’t make errors of judgment, but I have two grandsons by him, a third one about to be born; if I believe he is a paedophile, then I’ve got to face the reality that our three grandsons are at great risk.[88]
For Doctor Lehmann, any threat to his family is still conceived of as coming from outside the family, by a stranger, rather than from a member of his family, and the father of his grand-children.
This failure to recognize sex offenders on the assumption that they will be a stranger or outsider is a recurring theme in the Royal Commission. It was expressed thus by a victim:
The school instructed students on ‘stranger danger’, but there was no emphasis on ‘friendly danger’ or grooming behaviors. WP, a survivor of child sexual abuse at the school, said in evidence that if there had been, it would have been easier for him to report his sexual abuse.[89]
The Royal Commission highlights that the emphasis on stranger danger
results in a misrecognition of threats. The stranger is someone
who is unknown
– and who comes from the outside. But in all the Royal Commission case
studies, the offender is someone who
is in a position of trust and is known to
the victim and the family. It is inherent in the terms of reference of the Royal
Commission
that the focus is on offenders operating within institutions rather
than as outsiders. In fact, the offender may have been assiduous
in cultivating
the trust of the victim, their family and the institution.
A key plot device in the genre of horror is the origin of the monster.[90] This reflects a question of philosophy and theology – from whence does evil come?[91] One way of resolving a monster’s origins is by constructing an alternative world or dimension. In Alien, the monster is from another planet. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the presence of ghouls is explained by the town resting on a hell mouth. In The Exorcist, the possessing demon is from hell. In Stranger Things [2016] the monster comes from another dimension – the ‘upside down’. Even where monsters have been created in this world, they are outsiders and strangers due to their transgression of borders. Frankenstein’s monster is created by comingling corpses and crossing the border between life and death.
Although the genre of horror celebrates and performs stranger danger, it also
portrays a more insidious monster – that which
comes from within the
family and/or the community. In films such as Scream, Halloween,
Friday the 13th the monster starts as a human in the family
and/or community. In novels and films such as The Shining and
Insidious, a beloved family member is (possessed by) the monster.
Accordingly, the Royal Commission is consistent with much of the horror genre
which plays with or disrupts the expectation that monsters are outsiders or
strangers – victims are too focused on outside
threats or too close to
someone to perceive the inside threat. Horror and the Royal Commission remind us
that this complacent focus
on outsiders is misplaced and
dangerous.
THE RECOGNISABILITY OF MONSTERS
The assumption
that monsters are outsiders informs a related belief – that monsters are
recognisable. They are not like you
and me, and their monstrosity is visible. In
the Royal Commission, some witnesses did not report inappropriate behaviour
because
they assumed that paedophiles are easily recognisable. For example, in
Case Study 2, Lord abused children at and throughout his employment
as a casual
childcare assistant at YMCA between 2009 and 2011. He was convicted of 13
offences involving 12 children in 2013. One
of his colleagues gave evidence that
her understanding of the demographics of a typical offender was likely to be
from media and
television:
‘It would be somebody older, unmarried, and took that sort of sexual orientation through the means of desperation rather than choice’. Similarly, [another colleague] stated that she did not put Lord ‘in the category of child molesters’ as she had a mental ‘picture of a child molester’, which was nothing like Lord.[92]
The image that staff had of paedophiles meant that they did not recognise
Lord as a paedophile, because he looked no different from
you and
me.[93] Indeed, this was one of the
reasons they gave for not reporting him, even though some of his behaviour was
‘odd’.
The assumption that sex offenders are recognisable
monsters is reflected and reinforced in media reporting of certain paedophiles
who have captured the popular imagination, to the extent that these offenders
have been labelled ‘iconic
monsters’.[94] The photos of
paedophiles under arrest, trying to evade an angry public or their mugshots
confirm a stereotypical image of a paedophile
– with wild grey hair,
frenzied eyes, inappropriate clothing choices. We assume that we know one when
we see one. For example,
most people in New South Wales, Australia would be able
to recognise serial sex offender Dennis Ferguson. Upon revelations of his
sex
offending history, the entertainer Jimmy Savile’s appearance fit so well
into the stereotype of a sex offender that it
was almost as though he was hiding
in plain sight: Savile usually wore a tracksuit, gold jewellery and had long
white hair.
This assumption of recognisability is informed by the belief
that the body of the monster itself displays the transgression of boundaries.
Many iconic monsters are instantly recognisable as monsters – think
zombies, Frankenstein’s monster, the Blob, some
vampires,[95] and Mr
Hyde.[96] Monsters may be instantly
recognisable by some external insignia – think the facial scars and the
knives for fingers of Freddie
Krueger. Or they become recognisable by their
behaviour – zombies walk funny and cannot talk. It is comforting to
believe that
monsters are recognisable at first sight, even though the sight of
them may in and of itself be
horrific.[97] This is based on the
idea that wicked deeds or character are manifested in external
traits.[98]
The horror genre
also complicates and disrupts assumptions about the recognisability of monsters.
Many monsters lack external markings
and any indications that they are monstrous
– including those in The Omen, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers and most vampires.[99]
These stories play on an insidious fear that anyone could be a monster and we
would have no idea until the point of no return. Their
chameleonic nature is
part of their horror.[100] These
films express and excite a paralysing paranoia, the monster/alien could be
everyone and no-one. Thus, in the glorious It Follows, the monster is a
shape-shifter that is knowable because only the victim can see it. The Scream
films and, the recent highly enjoyable Netflix television adaptation, have a
monster that is recognisable due to his/her mask –
but when unmasked
– is a part of the community. In all these movies, the monster is only
recognised at the point of no return.
This reflects a paradox in popular
discourse about paedophiles – on the one hand paedophiles are easy to spot
but on the other
hand they are able to merge and
manipulate.[101] Paedophiles are
constructed like gothic monsters with a dual identity – with a
façade of normality covering evil and
cunning – like Doctor Jekyll
and Mr Hyde and Dorian Grey and his portrait. In many horror stories, the
monster is easily recognisable
to the audience as a monster, but not to victims
until too late. This is particularly the case for vampires who are strangers who
gain acceptance into a community but have insignia such as white skin, pointy
teeth and often a foreign accent that indicate they
are
dangerous.[102] The idea of
appearances belying reality is disturbing and discombobulating:
Abjection... is immoral, sinister, scheming, and shady: a terror that dissembles, a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for barter instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sells you up, a friend who stabs you...[103]
The pretence of civilized behaviour and friendliness in order to access
children disturbs and undermines system and order.
I certainly have been absolutely horrified by the predatory actions, the depravity, and the power play by these paedophile priests over people who should have expected just the opposite: care and love and support. [104]
Horror is aroused because of the disjunction between the duties and
expectations of a person and their nefarious motives. The person
who seems most
helpful, most interested and most caring is the person who intends the most
harm. Their charms are used for nefarious
purposes – like the sex offender
Lord offering free babysitting, or the ‘friendly
priest’.[105] The horror
genre problematizes the assumed recognisability of monsters – the worst
monsters are hidden or not recognised until
too late. Monsters are the perfect
figures for negative identity, they produce the negative of human – so it
is difficult to
articulate exactly what a paedophile looks like. The horror
genre encourages us to reflect that there are no specific traits associated
with
paedophiles and undermines the assumption that they are recognisably wrong or
‘off’.
THE MAGICAL POWERS OF MONSTERS
The Royal
Commission demonstrates that the conceptualisation of sex offenders as monsters
who are recognisable by some witnesses resulted
in these witnesses failing to
report and respond to the abuse at any level. Of more significance is the belief
that sex offenders
have extraordinary powers so that ordinary measures to defeat
them are doomed. This reflects a key attribute of monsters in the horror
genre
– that of extraordinary powers.
The idea of special powers ascribed
to paedophiles was asserted by some witnesses in the Royal Commission. This was
primarily ascribed
to paedophiles’ monomania – the desire for access
to and sex with children. Managers of institutions asserted the special
powers
of paedophiles to explicate their failure to protect children. In other words,
they did not stop the sex offender(s) because
they could not. For example, the
YMCA, one of the largest providers of after school care in New South Wales
issued a media release
during the public hearing in 2013 referring to:
Lord’s ‘secretive and sophisticated activities that allowed him
to gain access to children’, ‘the insidious,
secretive, devious and
sophisticated conduct of paedophiles who seek access to children through child
care organisations’.
The YMCA depicted Lord as a ‘mysterious
paedophile who had infiltrated their
organisation’.[106] He was
especially cunning, mysterious and malevolent, thus there was no reasonable way
that YMCA could have prevented him from
offending.[107] This parallels
media representations of paedophiles as sly, manipulative and deceitful,
systematically infiltrating certain professions
in order to access
children.[108]
The belief
that paedophiles have extraordinary powers is consistent with the construction
of monsters. Some monsters might have powers
that no human has – like
immortality, extra-sensory hearing or smell. Harms inflicted by Freddie Krueger
in his victim’s
dreams are carried through into real life. Some monsters
might have desires that no human has – including eating brains or
drinking
blood – or just a malevolent desire to maim and
destroy.[109] In the current
Scream series on Netflix, the killer hides behind a mask, but seems to
have superhuman strength, speed and cunning. Part of a monster’s
strength
is frequently monomania – they want only one thing. Thus zombies are
usually not particularly speedy or smart –
but they only want to eat
brains – they do not get distracted or tired and are
inexorable.[110] A central tenet
of the horror genre is that ordinary measures against monsters will not succeed.
Monsters stalk, threaten and wreak
havoc until the bitter end of horror stories
and often beyond (allowing for sequels). After all, if monsters were defeated at
the
beginning there would be no horror story. They are only defeated (if at
all), at the end with extreme measures – which then
in and of itself has
the potential to undermine the humanity of the
hero/ine.[111] Vampires and
zombies cannot just be killed. The rules vary slightly across stories, but
something extraordinary is required to resolve
monsters - vampires need a stake
through the heart and the brains of zombies must be destroyed.
An
ordinary response to threats or harm would be to turn to people in authority,
but in the genre of horror authorities are often
portrayed as ineffective or
themselves evil/corrupted. In the Royal Commission, people feared reporting
suspected sex offenders because
they thought that they would not be believed.
For example, teachers at an independent school stated that they felt
‘trepidation’
in raising concerns about suspicious behaviour in part
because they feared that they would be subjected to rejection, ostracism or
bullying if they reported the suspicious
behaviour.[112] This is consistent
with plots in horror stories where whistle-blowers are themselves treated as the
problem. Unfortunately, the Royal
Commission reports all too frequently confirm
these apprehensions of disbelief and the failure to respond by those in
authority.
One teacher at a Perth school overcame her fears that she would look
‘stupid’ if she reported inappropriate behaviour,
however after
nothing came of her first report she did not report any further inappropriate
behaviour.[113] The Royal
Commission has also analysed police responses to reports of sex offending which
at times (but not always) confirmed the
critical portrayal of the authorities in
horror fiction. For example, Report Number Nine provides a history of failures
by the police
to investigate, prosecutors to prosecute, and the authorities
failure to not only act to prevent sexual abuse, but glorifying and
celebrating
the offender by inducting him into the swimming Hall of Fame despite multiple
allegations of abuse.[114] In the
genre of horror, police, teachers and parents usually have no idea of what is
going on, if they are told they do not believe
it, and their actions are
frequently worse than
useless.[115] Police and security
guards are particularly inept. They often suspect and lock up victims and/or
treat the person who reports the
monster as
mad.[116] Police and security
guards either end up dead or are revealed as monsters themselves. Horror fiction
often portrays the fear that
there is no-one to whom a monster and its
wrongdoing can be reported, and even if there was, that that person would not do
anything
useful. Both the Royal Commission and the genre of horror explore the
intensified fear of feeling that there is no one to turn to
and that authorities
cannot or will not help.
In the Royal Commission, some members of
management used the argument of the extraordinary powers of monsters and the
consequent impossibility
of defeating and protecting against paedophiles to
explain and defend institutional failures. According to this argument, there
were
no basic steps that could have been taken against sex offenders. How, the
management of YMCA argued, could they have protected the
institution against the
cunning lies of Lord?:
Jonathan Lord offered two referees and obtained a Working with Children Check. He presented himself as a respectable member of his community. He made a general reference to having been involved with a children's camp in the United States and, as is now apparent, he lied about the circumstances in which he returned to Australia ...[117]
Although the Royal Commission presented the assertions of the
extraordinary powers of sex offenders in the final reports, the Commission
undermined and disputed these excuses. The Royal Commission has consistently
sought to reject the notion of paedophiles as monsters
and to emphasise that
ordinary measures and procedures could and would have prevented sex offending.
Thus, a common institutional
failure in the Royal Commission Reports was not
following internal procedures for recruitment, any of which would have resulted
in
the offender not having been employed in the first
place.[118] For example, if the
person in charge of recruitment, Barnat, had followed even one of the YMCA
recruitment policies Lord would not
have been employed. Lord submitted a one
page document containing personal details and work experience. Barnat did not
spot any ‘red
flags’, but if she had been adequately trained (in
line with YMCA polices) she would have easily spotted issues in his short
application:
Lord said one of his career ambitions was ‘to work with kids and help them to experience life, love and friendships in an environment where there are no walls or boundaries’.[119]
This sentence in an otherwise short document should have raised questions
about whether Lord understood the importance of boundaries
for children and his
responsibilities in maintaining
boundaries.[120] Barnat also
failed to follow up on Lord’s statement that he had worked in America as a
Cabin Counsellor but had to leave early.
If Barnat had followed YMCA procedure
and checked Lord’s claims with his most recent employer she would found
out that he had
been the subject of an employer investigation because of
suspected inappropriate behaviour at Camp America.
[121] Barnat also did not follow up
with his references, one of whom was a family member. The Royal Commission
responded bluntly, dispersing
any especial cunning by Lord and consequent
disavowal of responsibility by YMCA:
We do not accept that Lord infiltrated YMCA NSW. Rather, YMCA NSW let him in. Lord applied for a job and because of significant failures in recruitment, screening, management, supervision, and training, his employment continued and his conduct was not reported and he sexually abused YMCA children.[122]
The Royal Commission reports also indicate other failures according to
basic child protection procedures including unsupervised contact
with children
in contravention of
procedures.[123] Failure to follow
up on suspicious behaviour or even just basic failure by an employee to fulfil
the terms of their
employment.[124]
In his
analysis of monstrous wickedness, one of Cole’s key arguments is that
monsters serve a narrative
function.[125] Monsters are
figures in a story in which they are given a specific and prescribed role. For
Cole, the function of labelling and constructing
terrorists as monsters is to
create a community of fear, and to justify and require extreme responses. In the
Royal Commission, a
key narrative function for witnesses of constructing
paedophiles as monsters is to disavow responsibility, particularly institutional
responsibility. For example, in the YMCA, labelling Lord a monster was a way for
management to disavow responsibility – there
were no reasonable steps or
procedures that they could have taken to prevent the evil and cunning Lord. He
was a malevolent monster
who had infiltrated their organisation and there was
nothing that they could do to protect against him.
By assigning blame to individual junior staff members and the conduct of an “insidious, secretive, devious and sophisticated... paedophile”, YMCA NSW failed to acknowledge its own significant failings.[126]
A mythological conception of evil individualises a serious social
problem, focusing on individual pathologies and failures, rather
than the social
and structural context that enabled offences against
children.[127] The Royal
Commission rejected this individualistic mythological conception and instead of
focusing on individual sex offenders it
has analysed the institutional failures
that allowed, condoned or facilitated the offending behaviours.
REJECTING THE NOTION OF PAEDOPHILES AS MONSTERS AND THE HORROR OF
INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE
Whilst witnesses as individuals and as
representatives of organisations may have conceptualised sex offenders as
monsters –
transgressive, malevolent outsiders with extraordinary powers
– the Royal Commission has consistently attempted to demonsterize
paedophiles and to situate sex offending behaviours and motives as predictable
and comprehensible, rather than supernatural and mysterious.
Accordingly, the
Royal Commission has arguably sought to resist a horror reading. Despite this,
there are still consistencies with
the horror genre. Robin Wood has argued that
the ‘true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of
all that
our civilization represses or oppresses; its re-emergence is
dramatized, as in our
nightmares.’[128] In horror,
the repressed familiar returns, unfamiliar and monstrous. The Royal Commission
is an exercise in uncovering and bringing
to the surface nightmares that
institutions have sought to repress or oppress. In the Royal Commission,
familiar, safe and cherished
institutions have been rendered strange and
dangerous. Williams has argued that ‘contemporary horror has specialised
in making
the inside visible, opening it up and bringing it out and pushing the
spectacle of interiority to the limit to find out what that
limit
is.’[129] Just as in horror,
the Royal Commission has opened up the inside of institutions that are normally
closed to us. The innards of the
institutions have been exposed –
hierarchical structures, decision-making, policies and procedures.
Horror plays on the conflicting desires to both see and look away. Many
people will never watch horror, but amongst those who do,
some will cover their
eyes at the climactic infliction of violence to avoid seeing what they know will
happen. This trait of (some)
audience members is so well-known that directors
play with it. Thus in The Omen (1976), the director David Walker
intentionally extended the depiction of a decapitation, viewed through several
different cameras,
so that feeble audience members who looked away would look up
and be forced to see the head being lopped off from a different
angle.[130] Horror films
manipulate point of view – running and breathing with a victim, shifting
to a monster’s viewpoint, then
to a third person’s and then
documentary observation. The dependence by the Royal Commission upon witness
statements, from
varying sources including victims, victim’s families,
staff, management, experts and even sex offenders, similarly provides
shifting
viewpoints. Likewise, in the Royal Commission a constant theme has been the
exploration of a tendency to look away, to avoid
looking at and confronting
child sexual abuse. The Royal Commission has provided the same story, over and
over again, from a variety
of different viewpoints to force people to hear and
see.
Both horror and the Royal Commission offer sustained meditations on
wickedness – what a wrong is, who is responsible and who
deserves to be
punished. In the pursuit of this meditation, both horror and the Royal
Commission extend beyond the concerns and evidence
that would be the focus of
the criminal justice system. In the hearings, the Royal Commission accepts that
a witness did not have
a legal duty to report suspicion of abuse, and yet
witnesses are often questioned about their failure to report. These witnesses
are asked about their emotional reaction and whether even in the absence of a
legal duty they should have acted. This provides a
richer account of culpability
that goes beyond existing legal duties.
In common with the genre of
horror, the Royal Commission arouses the affect of horror. Yet the fear and
disgust is not primarily aroused
by the sex offenders, but by the institutional
and systemic failures to adequately prevent and respond to sex offending. The
very
title of the Royal Commission indicates its focus – upon
institutional failures. The Reports provide a deadening, depressing,
distressing
repetition of the same kinds of failures, over and over again. Both the genre of
horror and the Royal Commission have
almost a compulsive repetitiveness. Horror
stories and the Royal Commission represent wrongdoing with subtle but repetitive
variations
on themes. A frequent theme of horror is the way in which
institutions are somehow complicit with monsters. In horror, corporations
may
have created the monster or have protected the monster for good or nefarious
purposes.[131] In the Royal
Commission, representatives of institutions may have chosen to protect the
institution over and above the children they
had a duty to protect, a form of
institutional narcissism. Or the institution may have failed to adequately train
staff to recognise
grooming behaviours, have systems in place to prevent or
minimise opportunities for grooming and offending, or have inadequate systems
for reporting. The levels of culpability by institutions and their
representatives vary greatly, from simple ignorance to active
facilitation. The
infliction of harm facilitated by institutional failure and the repetition over
and over again of different forms
of failure arouse horror.
This then
harks back to another common theme of the horror genre – that the monsters
are visible and real, yet are only part
of the
problem.[132] The Royal Commission
marks a shift away from a mythological wickedness to something more banal,
insidious and depressing. The Royal
Commission provides a template of a
contemporary technology of wrong doing – a bureaucratic, collectivised
failure. Part of
the horror is that we do not know how to adequately
conceptualise and respond to this kind of collective failure. The dominant model
of culpability in criminal law and society of individualised, subjective
wrongdoing has diverted us away from developing a lexicon
and legal account of
collective culpability.[133] The
Royal Commission demonstrates the absence of, and need for, an account of
collective responsibility – as we become increasingly
dependent and
interdependent on each other and complex organisations. The Royal Commission has
highlighted an asymmetry of harm inflicted
and responsibility for it: ‘the
greater the suffering, the less responsibility can be established for
it.’[134] The Royal
Commission has refused to reduce responsibility and culpability solely to
individuals, and yet the Commission has highlighted
the absence of models of
collective responsibility to apply to articulate, regulate and ascribe
culpability in these examples of
institutional failings. Hannah Arendt concluded
her analysis of the trial of Eichmann by stating she had come to the dreadful
realisation
that Eichmann was ‘terribly and terrifyingly
normal’.[135] The Royal
Commission has highlighted that these proliferations of harms due to
institutional failures are terrifyingly normal.
Many horror stories
wallow in visions of disorder before order is reinstated. This reimposition of
order is not always final or satisfying.
Horror films represent social upheaval
and chaos. They provide an exploration of what happens when the broader
structures of society
fail – including family, gender, life and death, and
the state. Apocalyptic horror films explore the literal end that results
from
social decay and chaos. Similarly, the Royal Commission is an exercise in the
failure of broader structures and generates a
hope that some kind of order will
be reinstated. The genre of horror is not immoral. It often represents a
morality (albeit warped)
and excites at least a desire for justice (which may or
may not be delivered).[136]
Likewise, the Royal Commission excites a desire for justice, which may or may
not be delivered.
The horror genre has a ‘negative aesthetic
aim’[137] – it is
designed to disturb, and arouse fear and disgust. The Royal Commission has
aroused some fear, but particularly disgust,
in enunciating and detailing the
harms to victims enabled by institutional failures. But what are we to do with
these negative emotions?
The horror genre is fictional. We know that the
monsters will not leave the screen. The genre can be conservative in the
reimposition
and statement of order (for example, in the policing of sexual
boundaries), but it can also be radical in its critique and challenge
of
existing boundaries.[138]
Theorists have recognised the ‘promise’ of monsters in their
capacity to challenge and disrupt categories and boundaries.
Monster theory
celebrates and fears monsters as agents of change – representing and
enacting both threat and promise. Monsters
are a challenge to existing
taxonomies, understandings and categories, particularly those premised on binary
thinking. Binaries are
products of essentializing generic categories. Those who
breach and transgress boundaries can be regarded and constructed as monsters,
contaminated and contaminating, and blamed for their transgression. Monsters
represent difference and multiplicity rather than sameness.
A common theme of
monster theory is to emphasise the promise of monsters. For example, Halberstam
reads monstrosity as ‘almost
a queer category’:
The monster always represents the disruption of categories, the destruction of boundaries, and the presence of impurities and so we need monsters and we need to recognize and celebrate our own monstrosities.[139]
Monster theory has been applied to disrupt distinctions such as those
between human and animal[140] and
the categories of male and
female.[141] On these accounts,
admixtures of genres and borders – offer political promise or a
‘reverse
discourse’.[142]
The
Royal Commission could be read as a disruptive monster. Like other Royal
Commissions and inquiries in the past, this Royal Commission
could have
conservative or radical
effects.[143] In sheer size alone,
the Royal Commission is monstrous. Originally intended to proceed for two years,
it has since been extended
and will continue until 2017. It has generated a
mountain of transcripts, findings, reports, papers and recommendations. As a
behemoth
the Royal Commission is disruptive of the established order. Not only
has it threatened and harmed established, cherished institutions
that failed to
protect children, it is also challenging established models of responsibility.
It is disrupting the contemporary focus
on subjective, individualised wrongdoing
and considering instead collective responsibility and the culpability of
institutions. In
particular, the Royal Commission has aroused disgust for
sustained institutional failures. Whilst some theorists have argued that
disgust
should never be taken into account in the legal
system,[144] disgust has the
advantage of requiring and justifying a response. We can respond to the
disorderly by changing the systems of order.
The horror genre is an
imaginative expression and performance of fears. Imagination is required to
construct the monster – but
also to defeat it. Although the Royal
Commission has resoundingly rejected the idea of paedophiles as monsters there
remain consistencies
with horror. Much of horror is concerned with ‘a
search for that discourse, that specialised form of knowledge which will enable
the human characters to comprehend and so control that which simultaneously
embodies and causes its “trouble”’.
[145] The Royal Commission has a
similar trajectory. It is focused upon the articulation and exploration of the
powers and weaknesses of
institutions and the ‘troubles’ caused by
systemic failures and highlights that we will need imagination to solve the
problems and go beyond existing structures.
Biographical Note
[1] Mark Dombeck, monstrous but
not monsters, mentalhealthnet, October 1, 2002. https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/pedophile-priests-monstrous-but-not-monsters/;
Todd Nickerson, “I’m a pedophile you’re the monsters: my
week inside the vile right wing hate machine, Salon, September 30, 2015.
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/im_a_pedophile_youre_the_monsters_my_week_inside_the_vile_right_wing_hate_machine/. Recent
examples applying the monster label to paedophiles in the press include: Lewis
Dean, Britain's worst paedophile Richard Huckle: How monster preyed on
Malaysian children and wanted Bitcoin for child porn, International Business
Times, June 6, 2016; Robin Schiller, 'Cookie Monster' paedophile dies while
on temporary release, News Courts, June 7,
2016.
[2] For further information
refer to the Royal Commission website: https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/.
Henceforth in the text I will refer to the Royal Commission into Institutional
Responses Against Child Abuse as ‘the Royal
Commission’.
[3] For academic
comment see for example, Carol-Ann Hooper and Ann Kaloski, "'Rewriting 'the
paedophile': a feminist reading of The Woodsman,” Feminist
Review 83 (2006): 149-55, Vikki Bell, “The vigilant(e) parent and the
paedophile: The News of the World campaign and the contemporary
governmentality of child sexual abuse,” Feminist Theory 3 (2002):
83-102, Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France
1974-1975, Gillian Harkins, "Foucault, the Family and the cold Monster of
Neo-Liberalism" in Foucault, the Family and Politics , ed. Leon Rocha and
Robbie Duschinsky (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2012):
4.
[4] Terry Thomas, Sex Crime:
Sex Offending and Society (Portland OR: Willan):
21.
[5] Jon Silverman and David
Wilson, Innocence Betrayed: Paedophilia, the Media and Society
(Cambridge: Polity).
[6] Monsters
are also associated with other genres including science fiction, comedy and
children’s entertainment. Linda Badley,
Zombie splatter comedy from
Dawn to Shaun: Cannibal carnivalesque in zombie culture. Children’s
entertainment featuring monsters includes television series such as Sesame
Street and The Furchester Hotel and films such as Monsters
Inc. Whilst not needing or wishing to engage with the boundary between
horror and science fiction this quotation from Howard Hawks the
director of
The Thing is thought provoking:
It is important that we don’t confuse the Frankenstein type of
picture with the science fiction picture. The first is an out-and-out horror
thriller based on that which is impossible.
The science fiction film is based on
that which is unknown, but is give credibility by the use of science fiction
facts which parallel
that which the viewer is asked to believe.
Quoted in
Mark A. Vieira, Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic (London: Harry N
Abrams, 2003) 163.
[7] See for
example, Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns, Law in the domains of
culture,(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998); Richard K. Sherwin,
When Law Goes Pop: The vanishing line between law and popular culture
(London: the University of Chicago Press, 2000), William P. MacNeil, Lex
Populi: The Jurisprudence of Popular Culture (Standford: Stanford University
Press, 2007).
[8] Wai Chee Dimock,
Residues of Justice: Literature, Law and Philosophy (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1996).
[9] The
Royal Commission has released a small proportion of stories told by
de-identified victims who spoke at private hearings to the
public.
[10] Bernadette A.
Meyler, “The Myth of Law and Literature (Review of Thane Rosenbaum's
The Myth of Moral Justice: Why our legal systems fail to do what's
right,” Legal Ethics 8 (2005): 318-25,
319.
[11] Primo Levi wrote of the
pain of the ‘unlistened-to-story’, where his listeners did not
follow him, they were completely
indifferent. Survival in Auschwitz,
‘Our Nights’. He expressed the incapacity and unwillingness of his
audience to believe, and his frustration of not being
believed or
heard.
[12] Examples include,
Honni van Rijswijk, “Encountering Law's Harm through Literary Critique: An
anti-elegy of land and sovereignty,” Law and Literature 27 (2015):
237-52; Desmond Manderson, Kangaroo Courts and the Rule of Law: The Legacy of
Modernism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012); Karin van Marle and Stewart Motha,
Genres of Critique; Mark Antaki, “Genre, Critique and Human
Rights,” University of Toronto Quarterly 82 (2013): 974-96, Robert
Meister,
After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights (New York: Columbia
University Press).
[13] Alistair
Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An introduction to the theory of genres and
modes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)
.
[14] In terms consistent
with Wittgenstein. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1953).
[15] David Fishelov,
Metaphors of genre: The role of analogies in genre theory (Pennsylvania:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 26.
[16] Adena Rosmarin, The
Power of Genre (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985),
21.
[17] See for example, David
Fishelov, Metaphors of genre: The role of analogies in genre theory
(Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993),
12.
[18] John Frow, Genre:
The New Critical Idiom (Oxford: Routledge, 2005),
7.
[19] Honni van Rijswijk,
“Encountering Law's Harm through Literary Critique: An anti-elegy of land
and sovereignty,” Law and Literature 27 (2015): 237-52.
239.
[20] Frow, Genre: The New
Critical Idiom, 2.
[21]
Michel Foucault, "So is it important to think?” in Power: The Essential
Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984: Essential Works of Michel Foucault
1954-1984, ed. James D. Faubion (London: Penguin Books, 2001)
457.
[22] Mark Antaki, “The
Critical Modernism of Hannah Arendt,” Theoretical Inquiries in
Law 8 (2007): 251-75.
[23]
Antaki, Genre, Critique and Human Rights.
[24] George Gilligan,
“Royal Commissions of Inquiry,” Australian and New Zealand
Journal of Criminology 35 (2002):
298-307.
[25] Elena Marchetti has
divided this into orthodox and non-orthodox information. Elena Marchetti,
“Critical Reflections upon Australia's
Royal Commission into Aboriginal
Deaths in Custody,” Macquarie Law Journal 5 (2005):
103.
[26] Lisa Flynn, ‘Some
good will come from the horror of the Royal Commission’, Sydney Morning
Herald, 8 February 2017, http://www.smh.com.au/comment/some-good-will-come-from-the-horror-of-the-royal-commission-20170208-gu7zt2.html,
(accessed 28 February,
2017).
[27] Shurlee Swain,
History of Australian inquiries reviewing institutions providing care for
children (October 2014). The failure to deliver meaningful reforms from
Royal Commissions is not uncommon. See also Elena Marchetti, “Critical
Reflections upon Australia's Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in
Custody,” Macquarie Law Journal 5 (2005):
103.
[28] Gilligan, Royal
Commissions of Inquiry,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Criminology.
[29] Joseph
Slaughter, Human Rights, Inc.: The world novel, narrative form, and
international law (New York: Fordham University Press,
2007).
[30] Sandra L.
Resodihardjc, “Wielding a double-edged sword: The use of inquiries at
times of crisis,” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 14
(2006): 199-206.
[31] Meister,
After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights,
64.
[32] For example, James B.
Twitchell has focused on the ‘shivers’ – and argues that the
shiver sensation is a physiological
response, for example, the goose bumps.
James B. Twitchell, Dreadful Pleasures: An anatomy of modern horror (New
York: Oxford University Press,
1985)11.
[33] Noel Carroll,
The Philosophy of Horror, Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (London: Routledge,
1990).
[34] It should be noted
that monsters are not confined to the horror genre. Not only do monsters
populate other entertainment forms such
as science fiction and children’s
shows, monsters have also been part of the common law. Andrew Sharpe,
Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of Law (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010).
The category of monster remains relevant to law explicitly and implicitly. See
for example, Penny Crofts,
Monstrous Wickedness and the Judgment of
Knight,” Griffith Law Review 21 (2012): 72-100; Penny Crofts,
Wickedness and Crime: Laws of homicide and malice (London: Routledge,
2013); Phillip Cole, The Myth of Evil (London: Edinburgh University
Press, 2006).
[35] Carroll,
The Philosophy of Horror, Or, Paradoxes of the Heart,
52.
[36] Mary Douglas, Purity
and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London:
Routledge, 1996).
[37] For
example, Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991, USA) –
Hannibal the Cannibal can be regarded as a monster and/or a monstrous human
being. The film, which
won five academy awards, has been categorized as a
thriller and/or a horror.
[38]
For example, ZNation and The Walking Dead. There are also comedy
horror films that do not arouse horror, including Shaun of the Dead
(Edgar Wright, 2004,
UK).
[39] Andrew Tudor,
“Why horror? The peculiar pleasures of a popular genre,” Cultural
Studies 11 (1989):
443-63.
[40] Transcript, Day 163,
statement by Mary Elizabeth Donoghue 3/3/2016, 16507.
[41] Ibid.
16508.
[42] Transcript Case
Study 35 – Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, 1 December 2015 (Day
C130), Archbishop Dennis James Hart,
13816.
[43] Transcript Case
Study 42 – Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, 8 August 2016 (Day C158)
Newcastle Court House, Keith William Allen, 16672-16673;
16675-16676.
[44] Transcript
Case Study C36 – Church of England Boys’ Society, Anglican
Dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, 2 February 2016 (Day
C146), Hobart Court, Bishop John Douglas Harrower,
C15421.
[45] Transcript Case
Study 43 – Catholic Church in Maitland/Newcastle, 5 September 2016
(Day C168) Newcastle Court House, Witness CNR,
C174934-174935.
[46] Transcript
Case Study C36 – Church of England Boys’ Society, Anglican
Dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, 1 February 2016 (Day
C145) Hobart Court House, Bishop Phillip Keith Newell,
C15374.
[47] Transcript Case
Study 42 – Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, 3 August 2016 (Day C155)
Newcastle Court House, Pamela Wilson
16501-16502.
[48] Transcript
Case Study 42 – Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, 4 August 2016 (Day
C156) Newcastle Court House, Bishop Richard Franklin Appleby,
16525-16526.
[49] See also,
Transcript Case Study 35 – Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, 3
December 2015 (Day C132), Bishop Emeritus Hilton Deacon, 14081-14082.
This priest, who was a most evil person, doing evil things to little children
in a school, and had been doing it for quite some
time.
[50] Rebekah Ison,
Friendly priest became a pedophile ‘monster’, Australian
Associated Press, 16 August 2016 http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/nsw-catholic-diocese-braces-for-criticism/news-story/e11fe14e0c02564c719e11d65f83bb21
(accessed 15 September 2016). After testifying to the Royal Commission, a victim
told the media that the sex offender was a ‘monster’
and
‘evil’.
[51]
‘Evil depraved monster paedophile shares chilling details of
abuse’ 7News Adelaide, 26 February 2016 https://au.news.yahoo.com/sa/a/30938067/evil-depraved-monster-pedophile-shares-chilling-details-of-abuse-and-claims-he-didnt-care-if-he-was-caught/#page1
(accessed 15 September 2016).
[52] Tony Wright, Gerald
Risdale: portrait of a monster as a forgetful old man, The Age, 28 May 2015,
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/gerald-ridsdale-portrait-of-a-monster-as-a-forgetful-old-man-20150527-ghaz4w.html,
(accessed 15 September,
2016).
[53] Jenny Kitzinger,
Framing Abuse: Media influence and public understanding of sexual violence
against children (London: Pluto Press, 2004); Jenny Kitzinger, "The
'Paedophile-in-the-community' protests: sex crimes in the news and media
audiences
as activists" in Sex as Crime? eds. Gayle Letherby et
al. eds. (2011) 356-376.
[54] See
for example Anneke Meyer’s analysis of the New of the World ‘Name
and Shame’ campaign. Anneke Meyer, "Evil
monsters and cunning perverts:
Representing and regulating the dangerous paedophile" in Popular Culture,
Crime and Social Control ed. Mathieu Deflem 14 (2010)
195-217.
[55] Bell, “The
vigilant(e) parent and the paedophile: The News of the World campaign and
the contemporary governmentality of child sexual abuse,”; Hooper and
Kaloski, "'Rewriting 'the paedophile': a feminist
reading of The
Woodsman,” Feminist Review 83 (2006):
149-55.
[56] Kitzinger,
Framing Abuse: Media influence and public understanding of sexual violence
against children.
[57] Bill
Hebenton and Terry Thomas, “Sex offenders in the community: reflections on
the problems of law, community and risk management
in USA, England and
Wales,” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 24 (1996):
427-43. Derryn Hinch named alleged paedophiles under parliament privilege in his
Australian Federal Parliament Senate
speech, labelling paedophiles ‘human
vermin’ (13 September
2017).
[58] Philip Jenkins,
Intimate enemies: Moral panics in contemporary Great Britain, Silverman
and Wilson, Innocence Betrayed: Paedophilia, the Media and Society (New
York: Aldine de Gruyter,
1992).
[59] Foucault,
Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France 1974-1975.
[60]
Ibid.
[61] The classic monsters
of horror films, zombies, have been used to explain Derrida’s ideas about
undecidability. Zombies might
be ‘EITHER alive OR dead. But it cuts across
these categories: it is BOTH alive AND dead. Equally, it is NEITHER alive NOR
dead, since it cannot take on the “full” senses of these terms... in
terms of life and death, it cannot be decided’. Jeff Collins and
Bill Mayblin, Derrida: A Graphic Guide (Icon Books,
1996)17-20.
[62] Jeffery Cohen,
"Monster Culture" in Monser Theory: Reading Culture, (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996)
3-25.
[63] Barbara Creed, "Horror
and the Monstrous Feminine: An imaginary abjection", in The Dread of
Difference: Gender and the Horror Film ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1996)
42.
[64] Foucault, Abnormal:
Lectures at the College de France 1974-1975, 66. Sharpe disputes
Foucault’s assertion of a linear development in monsters and notes that
hermaphrodites were not part of
the monster category in English common law.
Sharpe, Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of
Law.
[65] See for example,
Ibid; Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of
Monsters (Durham: Duke University Press,
1995).
[66] Halberstam has argued
that ‘class, race, and nation are subsumed... within the monstrous sexual
body’. Ibid., 7.
[67] Robin
Wood, "An introduction to the American Horror Film", in American Nightmare:
Essays on the Horror Film ed. Andrew Britton (Toronto: Festivals of
Festivals, 1979) 216. The quotation continues:
Nowhere is this carried further than in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Here sexuality is totally perverted from its functions, into sadism,
violence, and cannibalism. It is striking that there is no suggestion
anywhere
that Sally is the object of an overtly sexual threat; she is to be tormented,
killed, dismembered, and eaten, but not
raped.
[68] Most of the rare
exceptions are relatively recent and include Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!
(2006) Chad Ferrin, Vicious Circle Films; Evil Lenko [2004] David Grieco,
Pacific Pictures; Silent House [2010] Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, LD
Entertainment. In the classic horror film series of the 1980s Nightmare on
Elm Street, the monster Freddie Krueger was a child killer as a human, who
after his death became a monster that could kill teenagers in their
dreams (and
real life). In the 2010 remake, Fred Krueger was transformed from child killer
to child molester (something that Wes
Craven had wanted to do in the original
1982 film). Incest is a more common theme – whether explicitly or
implicitly. Debates
about representations of serious harms have also been
expressed with regard to fictional portrayals of the Holocaust. See for example,
the Special Issue of Law and Literature (2004)
16(2).
[69] Recent portrayals of
these characters have questioned and explored their ‘hero’ status.
[70] Marina Warner, No Go the
Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock (New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1998).
[71] Martha
Nussbaum, "Secret Sewers of Vice': Disgust, Bodies and the Law", in
The Passions of Law ed. Susan Bandes (New York: NYU Press, 1999)
.
[72] See for example, Paul
Johnson, “Law, Morality and Disgust: The Regulation of 'Extreme
Pornography' in England and Wales,”
Social and Legal Studies 19
(2011): 147-63; Lord Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morality (London:
Oxford University Press,
1965.
[73]William Ian Miller,
The Anatomy of Disgust (Boston: Harvard University Press,
1997).
[74]Carroll, The
Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart,
32.
[75] Miller, The
Anatomy of Disgust.
[76]
Royal Commission, Report of Case Study No. 18: The response of the Australian
Christian Churches and affiliated Pentecostal churches to allegations
of child
sexual abuse. 73.
[77] Ibid.,
68.
[78] Miller, The Anatomy
of Disgust.
[79] Transcript
Case Study 42 – Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, 9 August 2016 (Day
C159) Newcastle Court House, Witness CKH,
C16877-C16878.
[80] Transcript
Case Study 32 – Geelong Grammar School, 4 September 2015 (Day
C099), Malcolm Powys,
C10294-10295.
[81] Royal
Commission, Report of Case Study No. 18: The response of the Australian
Christian Churches and affiliated Pentecostal churches to allegations
of child
sexual abuse.
[82] Kirsten
Moana Thompson, Apocalyptic dread: American film at the turn of the
millenium, Franklin and Cromby, Everyday fear: Parenting and childhood in
a culture of fear (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007). Sometimes the family is the
monster or breeds a monster, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Omen (1976). Another plot is the
horror of the family. Sobchack, Bringing it all back home: Family economy and
generic exchange.
[83] Wood,
"An introduction to the American Horror Film", in American Nightmare: Essays
on the Horror Film, 208.
[84]
Horror theorists have argued that the stranger forces resolution of underlying
issues that already existed in the family. See for
example analyses of The
Exorcist: Creed, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism,
Psychoanalysis; Crofts, “Monstrous Bodily Excess in the Exorcist as a
Supplement to Law's Accounts of Culpability,” Griffith Law Review
24 (2015): 372-94.
[85]
There are a variety reasons of why news reports do not focus on sex offenders
within the family – especially because this would
mean
‘outing’ the victims.
[86] Royal Commission, Report
of Case Study No. 18: The response of the Australian Christian Churches and
affiliated Pentecostal churches to allegations
of child sexual abuse.
11.
[87] Ibid.
72.
[88] Ibid.
72.
[89] Royal Commission,
Report of Case Study No. 12: The response of an independent school in Perth
to concerns raised about the conduct of a teacher between
1999 and 2009.
31.
[90] Sometimes the backstory
or explanation of a monster is not given at all. This lack of explanation can
also be terrifying. For example,
in It Follows, no explanation is given
for the monster at all. It just
is.
[91] A religious perspective
labels this as a problem of evil. If evil and suffering exist, then God is
either not omnipotent, not omniscient,
or not perfectly good. A classic
explanation for this is that evil is not a positive presence, but an absence of
grace or distance
from God. See for example, Thomas Aquinas, On Evil,
trans. Richard Regan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). This kind of
classic, negative model of wickedness is rarely if ever
portrayed in horror
– as it lacks the magisterial, entertaining character of a positive,
mythical, monstrous wickedness. See
further, Mary Midgley, Wickedness: A
Philosophical Essay (London, Routledge,
1984).
[92] Royal Commission,
Report of Case Study No. 2: YMCA NSW's response to the conduct of Jonathan
Lord.
[93] See also, Royal
Commission, Report of Case Study No. 37: The Response of the Australian
Institute of Music and RG Dance to Allegations of child sexual abuse.
Although Grant Davies was openly ‘handsy’, unprofessional and
inappropriate, including sexualised outfits and choreography
and texting
students after midnight, parents and staff did not recognise that Davies was
sexually abusing dancers.
[94]
Dave MacDonald, “Ungovernable Monsters: Law, Paedophilia, Crisis,”
Griffith Law Review 12
(2012).
[95] Film directors have
realised that our imaginations create better monsters than they can show, thus
frequently monsters are not shown
until quite late in a film. A recent exception
to this is the Master vampire in the The Strain. Although retaining some
connection to his humanity his face looks like a victim of too much plastic
surgery – and he is double
the size of normal humans and moves faster than
the eye can see.
[96] Hyde
raises a fear, an antagonism, and a deep loathing in other people. The reaction
of others to him is one of horror, partly because
while looking at him, others
feel a deep desire to strike out at him and kill him. In other words, his mere
physical appearance brings
out the very worst evil in other
people.
[97] An attribute of some
monsters is that just the sight of them can be harmful. Medusa provides an early
example, but in contemporary
fiction the idea of vampires
‘glamouring’ their victims.
[98] The villains of James Bond
films almost always have some kind of physical disfigurement which makes them
easily recognizable as baddies.
Victoria Wright, Why do Bond villians need
facial scars?, the Independent, 6 November 2012.
[99] I disagree with
Halberstam’s assertion that the postmodern horror film has transformed the
Gothic monster of the 19th century into an instantly recognisable
‘beast who is all body and no soul’. Judith Halberstam, Skin
Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, 1.
[100] The unrecognisable
monster has long been represented in horror. For example, with an alien
‘thing’ which is a shape-shifting
malevolent creature that assumes
the form of its victims in order to kill more of the trapped explorers, 1950s
films such The Thing From Another World (Howard Hawks, 1951) expressed
the paranoia of the Cold War era and McCarthyism. Kendall R. Phillips,
Projected Fears: Horror films and American culture 2 (Westport:
Greenwood Publishing Group Inc, 2005).
[101] Kitzinger, Framing
Abuse: Media influence and public understanding of sexual violence against
children.
[102] Halberstam
argues that racism and xenophobia are underlying themes of Gothic and
contemporary horror. Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology
of Monsters (Durham: Duke University Press,
1995).
[103] Julia Kristeva,
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1982) .
[104] Transcript
Case Study 35 – Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, 1 December 2015
(Day C130), Archbishop Dennis James Hart,
13814.
[105] Ison, Friendly
priest became a pedophile ‘monster’.
[106] Royal Commission,
Report of Case Study No. 2: YMCA NSW's response to the conduct of Jonathan
Lord.
[107] See also
Transcript, Case Study 32, Geelong Grammar School (10 September 2015) Day
103, Witness BLW, C10828.
When I made the disclosure about my brother's abuse, Sampson responded
immediately, saying, "He is a dangerous and manipulative man
who has for many
years slipped through the net". He then said something along the lines of, "Our
suspicions are that he has done
this to many students over many years and we
have never caught him out because nobody as ever written a letter of complaint.
He is
an evil man".
[108]
Meyer, "Evil monsters and cunning perverts: Representing and regulating the
dangerous paedophile",
203.
[109] Some philosophers
have argued that it is inhuman to willfully destroy and harm other humans for no
purpose other than pleasure.
[110] In Land of the
Dead the zombies like fireworks and this distracts them from their prey. The
film also presents zombies as evolving to develop intelligence.
[111] ‘He who fights
with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And
if you gaze long into an abyss,
the abyss also gazes into you.’ Friedrich
Nietzsche, trans. Helen Zimmern (Germany:
1886/1997)46.
[112] Royal
Commission, Report of Case Study No. 12: The response of an independent
school in Perth to concerns raised about the conduct of a teacher between
1999
and 2009. 32.
[113]
Ibid.
[114] Royal Commission,
Report of Case Study No. 9: The responses of the Catholic Archdiocese of
Adelaide, and the South Australian Police, to allegations
of child sexual abuse
at St Ann’s Special
School.
[115] In A
Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, a mother indirectly causes her
daughter’s death by giving her sleeping pills that leave her vulnerable to
Freddie’s
assault.
[116]
See for example the current Scream series and Nightmare on Elm
Street.
[117] Royal
Commission, Report of Case Study No. 2: YMCA NSW's response to the conduct of
Jonathan Lord.
[118] For
example, management did not contact referees and did not undertake police checks
in Royal Commission, Report of Case Study No. 9: The responses of the
Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, and the South Australian Police, to
allegations
of child sexual abuse at St Ann’s Special
School.
[119] Royal
Commission, Report of Case Study No. 2: YMCA NSW's response to the conduct of
Jonathan Lord.
[120]
Badley, Zombie splatter comedy from Dawn to Shaun: Cannibal carnivalesque in
zombie culture.
[121] Royal
Commission, Report of Case Study No. 2: YMCA NSW's response to the conduct of
Jonathan Lord.
[122]
Ibid.
[123] See for example,
Royal Commission, Report of Case Study No. 15: Response of swimming
institutions, the Queensland and NSW Offices of the DPP and the Queensland
Commission
for Children and Young People and Child Guardian to allegations of
child sexual abuse by swimming coaches. In that Report, Swimming Australia
and Swimming Queensland allowed unsupervised access to children by Scott Volkers
even after sexual
abuse allegations had been made. In fact, Swimming Queensland
employed Volkers after the allegations. See also, Royal Commission,
Report of
Case Study No. 9: The responses of the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, and the
South Australian Police, to allegations
of child sexual abuse at St Ann’s
Special School, Royal Commission, Report of Case Study No. 2: YMCA NSW's
response to the conduct of Jonathan Lord.
[124] For example, the driver
of the school bus for children with disabilities was frequently late in dropping
off children. It was during
this time that he offended against the children.
Royal Commission, Report of Case Study No. 9: The responses of the Catholic
Archdiocese of Adelaide, and the South Australian Police, to allegations
of
child sexual abuse at St Ann’s Special School.
16-17.
[125] Cole, The Myth
of Evil.
[126] Ibid.,
103.
[127] Meyer, "Evil
monsters and cunning perverts: Representing and regulating the dangerous
paedophile; Kitzinger, "The 'Paedophile-in-the-community'
protests: sex crimes
in the news and media audiences as activists"; Richard Wortley and Stephen
Smallbone, "Situational Prevention
of Child Sexual Abuse", Crime Prevention
Studies 19 (Monsey: Criminal Justice Press, 2006).
[128] Robin Wood,
Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press,
1986).
[129] Linda Ruth
Williams, The Inside-Out of Masculinity: David Cronenberg's Visceral Pleasures"
in The Body's Perilous Pleasuers: Dangerous Desires and Contemporary
Culture ed. Michele Aaron (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999)
34.
[130] The Omen, the
director’s cut.
[131] For
example, in 28 Days Later scientists create the rage virus in order to
study and perhaps cure the human emotion of rage. In the Alien series,
the Corporation regards the alien as a potential military weapon. In the spooky
Netflix series, Stranger Things, the government and a mad scientist are
undertaking experiments that have unleashed a monster on a small American
town.
[132] Stephen
King’s novels It and The Shining emphasise that the town was
already dead or rotten before the monster started
attacking.
[133] Penny Crofts,
“Legal irresponsibility and institutional responses to child sex
abuse,” Law in Context 34 (2016):
79-99.
[134] Scott Veitch,
Law and Irresponsibility: On the legitimation of human suffering (New
York: Routledge, 2007) 3.
[135]
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
(New York: Penguin Books,
1994).
[136] ‘Rather than
condoning the perversity they recorded, Gothic authors, in fact, seemed quite
scrupulous about taking a moral
stand against the unnatural acts that produce
monstrosity.’ Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology
of Monsters, 12.
[137]
Cynthia Freeland, The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror
(Westview Press, 2000) 5.
[138] Wood, "An introduction
to the American Horror Film",
215.
[139] Halberstam, Skin
Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters,
27.
[140] Donna Haraway, The
Promise of Monsters: A regenerative policits for inappropriate/d others (New
York: Routledge, 1992),
295-337.
[141] Ibid., Sharpe,
Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of Law; Crofts, “Monstrous
Wickedness and the Judgment of Knight".
[142] Michel Foucault, The
History of Sexuality Volume 1 (France: Editions Gallimard, 1976), 101. Girl
with all the gifts, werewolves, the
12
[143] See for example:
Stephen Donaghue, Royal Commissions and Permanent Commissions of Inquiry
(2001); Leonard Arthur Hallett, Royal Commissions and Boards of Inquiry:
Some Legal and Procedural Aspects (1982); A Paul Pross, Innis Christie and
John A Yogis, eds., Commissions of Inquiry (1990); Janet Ransley,
Inquisitorial Royal Commissions and the Investigation of Political Wrongdoing
(PhD Thesis, Griffith University, 2001); Tom Sherman, Executive Inquiries
in Australia: Some Proposals for Reform. Law and Policy Paper No 8
(1997); Patrick Weller, ed., Royal Commissions and the Making of Public
Policy (1994).
[144]
Nussbaum, 'Secret Sewers of Vice': Disgust, Bodies and the
Law.
[145] Stephen Neale,
Genre, (UK: British Film Institute, 1980), 22.
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