Male, presumed dangerous

Battling stereotypes … preschool worker Craig d'Arcy has set up the Males in Early Childhood Network Group. Photo: Greg Mace

As a young man eager to get into a boom industry with a robust future, Craig d'Arcy spent several years as the only male studying childcare alongside more than 100 women at TAFE and university in Newcastle.

Early in his career, his childcare centre boss told him parents had highlighted in yellow on their child's enrolment form they wanted no male worker to go near their offspring. Two decades on, as founder of the national Males in Early Childhood Network Group, d'Arcy has heard about centres that ban men from changing nappies and is used to people thinking those who want to work with the young are either gay or have evil intent.

So he easily recognised the vein of fear about male contact with children that popped up when two men went public recently about their embarrassment over airline staff moving them away from unaccompanied minors.

"The stereotype is that men are predators who are looking for opportunities to abuse young children," says d'Arcy, who is co-ordinator of a Mullumbimby preschool and has six children of his own. "There seems to be that automatic assumption."

Most of the 2900 men who make their living caring for under-fives butt up against these assumptions regularly in a way that their 100,000-plus female counterparts do not, he says.

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Fathers with a history of child sexual abuse: New findings for policy and practice - Child Family Community Australia

The trauma of child sexual abuse can manifest in many areas of victim/survivors' lives, including their attitudes towards parenting and their relationships with their children. This paper outlines the key findings of the limited research that has investigated how a history of child sexual abuse can influence men's perceptions and experience of fatherhood, and also discusses some of the reasons why this important topic remains largely excluded from public, academic and policy discourses. This paper will be most useful to practitioners and policy-makers who work to support men, parents and/or families.

This is an abridged version of "Child Sexual Abuse, Masculinity and Fatherhood" (Price-Robertson, in press), accepted for publication in the Journal of Family Studies Volume 18/2-3 (December 2012) special issue on Fatherhood in the Early 21st Century (ISBN 978-1-921980-02-2).

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Child sex case: female former teacher arrested on Sydney's northern beaches

Police have laid seven charges against a female former teacher at a northern beaches high school, who is accused of grooming a teenage male student for sex.

The woman was arrested at a unit block in Dee Why at 9.15am and taken to Dee Why police station.

The crime manager of Manly Local Area Command, Detective Inspector Luke Arthurs, told media a short while ago that the unnamed women, then 46 and now 50, had been charged this morning with five counts of aggravated sexual assault and two counts of aggravated indecent assault.

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Press Starting To See the Light in Abduction Case | Fathers & Families

This case has stirred the Australian press for almost a month now.  I posted this piece about it some two weeks ago.  It’s the case of the Australian woman who moved to Italy to study the language, met an Italian man, married him and had four daughters with him.  They separated with her getting primary custody and him getting fairly sparse visitation.  Two years ago, she took the girls to Australia for what she said was a holiday, never to return.  He’s been going through various court procedures to try to get his kids back and earlier this year, prevailed.  An Australian court found that the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction required the girls’ return to Italy.  The mother had claimed that the father was abusive, but the Australian judge found no evidence of that.  

What’s been most remarkable about the case is the press coverage it’s received in Australia.  In my first piece on it, I pointed out that, of the many articles on the case, not one reporter thought to contact the father.  Against a seamless backdrop of pro-mother outrage, the father remained literally voiceless.  That was true despite the fact that the mother had plainly violated the law.  As well, her claims of abuse had been investigated and found unsupported.  So in fact, the judge did the only thing he could do and the only thing he should have done for the sake of the children, the father and the rule of law – order them returned to the father in Italy.

But the fact that the legal system worked properly and reached the correct result seemed not to dawn on any reporter on the case.  If it did, they never let on about it.

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Young love comes back to haunt couple

Lyn and Neville Cox … 40 years on he was listed with "bad people". Photo: Kylie Shaw

Lyn and Neville Cox were childhood sweethearts who had grown up in the same street. They were very much in love. When she became pregnant at 15, Lyn's father was furious and reported 16-year-old Neville to police, who charged the boy with carnal knowledge.

The half-hour court hearing that followed seemed inconsequential, but more than 40 years later it revealed its lasting legacy, branding Mr Cox a child sex offender who should not be around children.

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