Nevertheless, there may be something of value in this, particularly in regard to your last question. Here is what she sent:

I’ve been trying to think about the of how we would know if Australia is more violent than other countries and/or has more severe violence. I suspect the answer is we don’t know, and I imagine it would be very difficult to get data that is genuinely comparable, but there is currently an international attempt to do this, through the International Violence against Women survey (Australia is one of the countries). It seems still to be at the data collection stage, and not yet doing comparisons, but it will be interesting I think. There is some info about the Australian end at
http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/newsletter/n6.html#IVAWS.

This research (2000 international Crime Victims Survey http://www.unicri.it/wwd/analysis/icvs/pdf_files/key2000i/index.htm) finds Australian women (alongside women from Sweden, Finland, England and Wales) at higher risk of sexual assault than women from Japan, Northern Ireland, Poland and Portugal, who were least at risk, but who knows how much it can be traced to people in somewhere like Australia having a stronger sense that rape etc is a crime compared to other countries, given our longer history of work on sexual violence. The stats are based on interviews, which depends on people self-identifying as a victim of crime - if you don’t think what you’ve experienced is a crime, you’re not going to identify as a victim of crime.

I asked her about it, and she will find out if there is someone there that you could contact about being put in touch with someone that could help with writing a FAQ for the site. She said she wasn’t sure if she would be able to get any info due to confidentiality. I told her that even if she can’t put you in direct contact with a person that has experienced it, being able to talk to someone at the NP that could pass your information along to those that have, and might be interested in helping, would be awesome.

I have no idea if anything will come of it, as she just started there yesterday, but I thought I’d let you know.

I came up with an almost complete blank when I tried digging on NZ for you a while ago. Aus should be easier so I’ll see what I can come up with beyond what Beppie has. I don’t know personally.

As to the Howard Government’s moves regarding remote Indigenous communities, its natural to be suspicious because it comes from this government and there has been so little consultation. However, the point that makes things really clear is that one part of the package will absolutely, definitely increase the rate of sexual abuse in these communities, and the government knows this. While there are some good initiatives in the package, and some that may or may not be helpful it’s hard to take the whole thing seriously when they’ve slipped in a one of their long term ambitions knowing that it will make it easier for white abusers to get access to vulnerable children in the communities.

Basically, if women in the outback report a rape and want a rape kit done, then they have to travel great distances, at personal expense. Now just image how worse that situation is for children and teens. Of course, many of the bad cases we’ve seen at ST have been young people located in cities. But still… ugh.

FYI, from what I know from the users we’ve seen, as well as what I suspect, these are not indigenous, but white families.

I’ve heard a couple blips on my radar about the Howard thing, and I have to say, I’m unimpressed. It’s just so typical for any colonizing populace to do things this way: we saw it here with AIDS and gay men, we’ve seen it here with drug campaigns only pointed towards people of color, etc. So, I’m in agreement with you about being wary of those measures, especially with something like sexual abuse, which discriminates in NO sense whatsoever, nor, when we look at global rates, has shown itself to be more prevalent by race or color.

Of course, too, one typical result of campaigns like that aimed at any one group provides every group NOT addressed with an extra cloak of invisibility, and I think we can all agree that no matter where we’re talking about, white people have had more than all the deniablility and measures to hide out that we need.

Stop Child Abuse:
http://www.stopchildabuse.com.au/

ASCA– Advocates for Survivors of Child Abuse:
http://www.asca.org.au/about/about.html

The ASCA site has some stories from survivors who have gone through the legal process– the most detailed of these spoke glowingly about the legal system (in NSW– these things vary from state to state)– but it was a lack of family and community support that prevented her from speaking up.

Of course, at the moment here in Australia the big news story is John Howard’s measures to prevent child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/06/21/1182019286734.html
There is no doubt that sexual abuse is rampant in SOME Aboriginal communities, but of course I’m wary about these measures that Howard is taking– if they do stop abuse, that is wonderful, of course, but to me it smacks much more of trying to gain control of indigenous communities, and using a very real need to address abuse issues as a guise. Tigtog at Hoyden about Town sums it up pretty well:
http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=671
Additionally, my inital response was that I am sure that it’s not just Aboriginal communities in which such abuses are rife– and I think your observations about ST bear that out. It’s unlikely that many Australian kids posting at ST come from these Aboriginal communities, given that the communities in question tend to be extremely poor, and are unlikely to have internet access.

I really can’t think of a specific reason WHY we seem to get more Aussie and Kiwi kids reporting extreme abuse at ST– as I mentioned before, there is the POSSIBILITY that Aussie kids at least are responding to campaigns that encourage the reporting of abuse, but it would be dangerous to assume that that was the case– I’m putting it out there as a possibility, but not an assumption. Another possibility along these lines is that every internet community that I’ve been a part of seems to have had a disproportionate number of Aussies participating (and I don’t seek out specifically Australian communities)– in spite of the fact that we’re technolgically five years behind the US when it comes to the internet, we do seem to use it a lot. Maybe there’s some cultural thing here that leads us to bring our troubles online where the same would not occur elsewhere?

However, this is not to discount the possiblity that higher rates of abuse occur here also– even if Australians ARE more likely to report, and are more likely to do so online, there’s still a good chance that the higher numbers you’re noticing reflect a higher rate of abuse overall. Thinking of why though, that’s really tricky. Certainly, the usual factors come into play– basically the lack of community and family support for talking about abuse, the culture of silence– but I can’t think why it’d be more likely to occur here than in the US.

Just from personal experience, when I was in high school, I had a friend whose father was in jail for abusing her older sister– my friend had actually discovered the abuse of her sister at a young age, which led to it being reported. I did sometimes wonder if my friend had experienced direct abuse too, but if she did, she never said so. There are also a couple of other people I knew from my primary school that might have been sexually abused. I can’t say for sure, of course, and must be even more cautious when talking about memories from childhood, but I think one of these friends may have tried to talk to me about it once. I am, in fact, absolutely certain that this girl did experience abuse at the hands of her adoptive parents (she ended up leaving them because of it), but whether this abuse was sexual I cannot say– I just recall that she told me that her parents made her do really horrible things, and looking back on it, I have a sinking feeling that at least some of those horrible things might have been sexual in nature . I tried, when I was a child, to talk to my parents about my concern for this girl, but they seemed fairly dismissive of it– but of course, my report would not have included anything about sexual abuse in it– at that age (lucky for me) I don’t think I even knew that such a thing as sexual abuse could occur. Maybe it’s a result of a “She’ll be right mate, don’t interfere in other people’s business” type attitude that it’s so hard for people, especially children, to be heard when they speak out… I just don’t know.