Natalie Siegel-Brown: NZ's chance to break the child sexual abuse chain

Marchers carry a coffin, symbolising the death of childhood innocence, at a rally in the Far North trying to get people talking about sex abuse. Photo / Peter de Graaf, File

Opinion

Imagine a health system that only had an emergency department. Imagine the needless suffering. Imagine the nurses and doctors who would be completely overwhelmed providing support to people with preventable diseases.

And so it is with some of our greatest societal problems – like child sexual abuse. We have made great strides in places like New Zealand in raising awareness and creating a community that wants to take action.

We are investing more in the police response and the support services for victims of abuse. The question I hope the New Zealand Royal Commission will make us ask ourselves, is how much are we actually doing to address what causes people to perpetrate abuse?

Child sexual abuse is rightly considered by our society as its most heinous crime – and so the idea of exploring why people do it feels sickening, right?

But if we are honest about preventing children from being sexually abused, we must confront and address why people sexually abuse children.

New Zealand – here is your chance. The Australian Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission explored this question in depth, but we are yet to see governments in Australia address them head-on. My aspiration is that the New Zealand Royal Commission will come up with concrete actions.

One perpetrator has many victims. This we know from decades of research and thousands of testimonies in front of the Australian Royal Commission. Intercept and change the behaviour of one person who may become a paedophile, and you save hundreds of lives.

I have worked with victims, and also paedophiles, when I was given the statutory position of being the Queensland Public Guardian in Australia.

Some people are shocked to know there are individuals who actually want help to prevent themselves from offending. Many of these people are young. My experience challenged my previous stereotypes of an offender both online and in our community.

Members of the community picture a child sexual abuser as someone who preys on children from outside the family or online. However, the majority of reported child sexual abuse occurs in the home. This is where lockdown has both incubated and exacerbated the issue. Many perpetrators of child abuse online are also abusing children in the home.

There is also an offending that has rampantly increased. People seeking out child abuse images increased. Across the world, media platforms that support the distribution of child abuse images were so overburdened by users during the start of lockdowns that they crashed.

The victims are children all over the world, not just those being groomed on computers in places like New Zealand. What does this say about the people who want to access this material and why? What does it say about the increase in access to this material?

"Paedophiles and paedophilia are pure evil, Nat. We just have to accept there is evil, and evil people in this world," a colleague once said to me.

Well no, we don't have to "just accept" it.

Natalie Siegel-Brown. Photo / Supplied

We don't "just accept" there is disease, without researching the causes and investing in fighting those causes.

We need to do the same to find and address the causes of child sexual abuse. People are working on programmes to address this but it's not on a scale even close to what's needed.

New Zealand and Australia's police and other national support services are amongst global leaders in intercepting online child abuse materials.

My organisation, Child Wise, is bringing new technology to our region that will enhance this ability. There are many other incredible organisations out there that support victims of this horrific abuse.

There are brilliant minds in New Zealand, leading research that gives us the clues as to the policies needed to address the drivers of offending. From Australia, we have watched as you have invested in campaigns like "Keep it real online" to begin important conversations at home and in society more broadly around online safety from the perspective of both parents and young people. Education is such an important form of prevention.

However, we have a long way to go to make the appropriate investment, policies and legislation that can turn the tide on offending itself.

We can't keep relying on a response that is simply police intervention once offending has occurred.

We will always need the emergency department. We will always need the incredible, dedicated police who witness unspeakable trauma and come back every day to intercept offending, the counsellors and support workers who support the road to recovery for victims of abuse.

Governments and communities need to listen – and ask ourselves that confronting question: what do we need to implement so we are not just relying on our emergency department?

Addressing the cause of perpetration can prevent numerous further victims.

• Natalie Siegel-Brown is the managing director of Child Wise and the former Queensland Public Guardian.