“Unbearable Knowledge”: Managing Cultural Trauma at the Royal Commission

The Work of Acknowledgment: ‘Loud Fence’ as Community-Level Response to Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Testimony

“…Representing just a fraction of those abused across Ballarat's Catholic institutions, the truer figure is far, far higher. While child sexual abuse is notoriously difficult to accurately measure, the Royal Commission established, for example, that at St Alipius alone in the single year of 1971 every male teacher and the school's chaplain were sexually abusing children (McPhillips, 2017: 139).…”

“…Throughout the course of Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Ballarat became a significant focus of the Inquiry (McPhillips, 2017; Wilson and Golding, 2017; McDonald and Oldfield, 2023). As the scale of historical abuse throughout the town became clearer, locals responded by attaching colourful ribbons to institutional sites associated with such abuse.…”

Re-imagining the place of religion in the workplace: The example of Australian social work

“…Moreover, Bishop Michael Challen's (1996, p 26) comment some 20 years ago as Director of the Anglican welfare agency the Brotherhood of St Laurence when he said 'The people of Australia expect the Churches to be active in the care of people, whether they are members or not' is still likely to find considerable agreement within the Australian community. Nevertheless, various inquiries, including the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, have certainly brought out more public questioning as to the capacity of some religious organisations to provide appropriate services to vulnerable members of the Australian community (Healy, 2015;McPhillips, 2017). This comes after the recognition that in past decades church organisations were involved in the removal of indigenous children from their families and communities, in what has become known as the 'Stolen Generation', forcing unmarried mothers to relinquish babies for adoption, and the mistreatment of child migrants sent from residential care providers in the UK (Crisp, 2014;Healy, 2015).…”

Healing cultural trauma and its application to the Router programme

“…This issue of cultural trauma in the context of cultural complexes is critically important because it is generally agreed that ‘trauma can interfere with safety, esteem, intimacy, trust and control needs’ (Miller et al 2010, p. 121), whilst ‘collective trauma can shape cultural identity’ (McPhillips 2017, p. 130).…”