Gleeson Kate - The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexual Abuse and Agency

First published in 2019 by

UWA Publishing

Crawley, Western Australia 6009

www.uwap.uwa.edu.au

UWAP is an imprint of UWA Publishing, a division of The University of Western Australia.

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

Copyright collection Kate Gleeson and Catharine Lumby 2019

Each individual author retains copyright of their work.

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

ISBN: 978-1-76080-078-9 (epub)

ISBN: 978-1-76080-079-6 (ePDF)

Cover design by Ten Deer Sigh

Cover image by Laura Robins

Typeset by J&M Typesetting

Contents

Kate Gleeson and Catharine Lumby

Tobia Fattore

Kate Gleeson

Murray Lee and Thomas Crofts

Terri Libesman and Hannah McGlade

Catharine Lumby, Kath Albury and Alan McKee

Kelly Richards

Zora Simic

Acknowledgements

The chapters in this volume were inspired by a workshop held at Macquarie University in late 2016. We are grateful for the support of the Macquarie Arts Faculty and for all who contributed to the debate of these important and complex social issues.

Contributors

Dr Kate Gleeson is a Senior Lecturer and Research Director of Macquarie Law School. She studied for her PhD at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), including time spent studying as a Chevening Scholar in the UK. Kate is interested in the governance and regulation of bodies, sexuality and reproductive practices and has published widely on the history of the regulation of sexual violence, gay sex, pornography, abortion and sex work. She has particular expertise in justice for crimes of institutional and historical child sexual abuse in Australia and internationally. She is writing a book about historical prosecutions of child sexual abuse, and undertaking ongoing research about Irish and Australian histories of institutionalisation.

Catharine Lumby is a Professor of Media Studies at Macquarie University. She is the author and co-author of six books and numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is writing a literary biography of the author Frank Moorhouse. Before entering academia in 2000, she was a journalist and opinion writer and has worked for the Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC and the Bulletin magazine. Her research interests focus on social media, young people, and the prevention of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Tobia Fattore is a member of the Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, Australia. His theoretical and empirical research interests are in the broad areas of the sociology of childhood and the sociology of work. He is undertaking an analysis of the organisational norms and practices that characterise child reform institutions where child abuse has occurred from the perspective of employees in those institutions, and a sociological examination of childrens well-being in relation to processes of modernisation. He is a co-ordinating lead researcher on the multi-national study Childrens Understandings of Well-being Global and Local Contexts, which involves a qualitative investigation from a comparative and global perspective into how children experience well-being, to explore the relative importance of local, regional and national contexts for childrens well-being (see ). He is a serving Board Member of the International Society for Childhood Indicators.

Murray Lee is a Professor in Criminology at the Sydney Law School. He has been a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Inventing Fear of Crime: Criminology and the Politics of Anxiety (Willan Publishing, 2007), co-author of Sexting and Young People (with Thomas Crofts, Alyce McGovern and Sanja Milivojevic, Criminology Research Advisory Council, 2017), co-author of Policing and Media: Public Relations, Simulations and Communications (with Alyce McGovern, Routledge, 2014), co-editor of Fear of Crime: Critical Voices in an Age of Anxiety (with Stephen Farrall, Routledge, 2009), and editor of the scholarly journal Current Issues in Criminal Justice. Murrays research focuses broadly on representations and perceptions of crime and how these lead to processes of criminalisation. This includes the increasing mediatisation of crime and crime control and the development of new forms of media and communication that both create new crime risks and new anxieties, but also new forms of surveillance, control and governance. His research interests involve fear of crime, police body-worn cameras, policing and the media, sexting and young people and crime prevention.

Thomas Crofts is Professor of Criminal Law at the Sydney Law School. His research in criminal law, criminology and criminal justice centres on criminalisation and criminal responsibility with a particular focus on the criminalisation and criminal responsibility of children, comparative criminal law and criminal law reform.

Dr Terri Libesman is Associate Professor of Law at UTS, Sydney. Her research and advocacy is focused on First Nations childrens rights. She drafted the chapters and recommendations on contemporary child welfare, family law and co-drafted the chapter on self-determination for Bringing Them Home, the report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. She has for the subsequent two decades worked with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander childrens organisation including SNAICC, the national peak representative body. She is working with the Aboriginal Legal Service NSW on a project investigating participation in child welfare decision-making. Her recent books include Decolonising Indigenous Child Welfare: Comparative Perspectives (Routledge, 2014) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Relations (with Larissa Behrendt, Chris Cunneen and Nicole Watson, OUP, 2018).

Dr Hannah McGlade is a Noongar human rights and social justice advocate. Her research and community interests include Aboriginal women and children, incarceration, decolonisation and healing. Presently the Senior Indigenous Research Fellow at Curtin University, Dr McGlade received the Stanner Award for her book Our Greatest Challenge:Aboriginal Children and Human Rights (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012). She was the 2016 Senior Indigenous Fellow to the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and has been active with various UN mechanisms to increase respect for Aboriginal peoples human rights through international human rights law.

Kath Albury is Professor of Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. Her research focuses on young peoples practices of digital self-representation and the role of usergenerated media (including social networking platforms) in young peoples formal and informal sexual learning. She leads an Australian Research Council Linkage partnership with ACON Health Ltd and Family Planning NSW, exploring young peoples perceptions of safety and risk on digital dating and hook-up apps.