0:20 [UNKNOWN]: You 0:58 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm an associate professor of criminology here at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. 1:05 [SPEAKER_02]: I've been appointed as a C&T of Fellow, which means basically a research fellow. 1:08 [SPEAKER_02]: At most my time is focused on research. 1:12 [SPEAKER_02]: But probably the last 15 years or so, most of my works been with adults who describe sexual abuse by groups of offenders in childhood. 1:22 [SPEAKER_02]: what I call organized abuse. 1:24 [SPEAKER_02]: When I started doing this work 15 years ago it was a very controversial area to work in and those a lot of skepticism that that's an ex-offenders who abuse children operated in networks and groups. 1:36 [SPEAKER_02]: That skepticism has disappeared over the time I've been doing doing the work. 1:40 [SPEAKER_02]: It's really undeniable now that we 1:43 [SPEAKER_02]: need to deal with criminal conspiracies of pedophiles and sex offenders. 1:48 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so that's mostly what I study. 1:51 [SPEAKER_02]: So I do a lot of work on the mental health impacts, those sorts of criminal activity that organised groups get up to and increasingly working, also in the tech space looking at the current epidemic. 2:04 [SPEAKER_02]: of online child sexual abuse material and how we can get abuse images and videos of kids offline, much more efficiently and effectively than we have been fascinating already. 2:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Michael, we know that you're involved with the International Society for the study of trauma and dissociation and we'd really like to hear what your involvement is and how that group came to be. 2:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great. 2:30 [SPEAKER_02]: The RSSTD was formed in the mid-1980s, in 1986, and it was formed by clinicians and therapists who were encountering severely traumatized children and adults in mental health settings. 2:47 [SPEAKER_02]: So in 1980, the DSM-3 was published. 2:51 [SPEAKER_02]: So the DSM is from the Psychiatric Bible. 2:54 [SPEAKER_02]: It is a collection of kind of recognized and authorized psychiatric diagnoses. 3:00 [SPEAKER_02]: And in 1980, for the first time, there are a number of trauma-related disorders that were recognized by the Psychiatric Profession in the United States. 3:09 [SPEAKER_02]: One of these being post-traumatic stress disorder, but also multiple personality disorder, 3:15 [SPEAKER_02]: And when clinicians were taking these diagnoses and criteria into their practice and starting to diagnose clients using this criteria, they were hitting a small but, you know, still quite significant group of kids and adults who were severely traumatised. 3:32 [SPEAKER_02]: And we're also disclosing experiences of abuse that were unprecedented. 3:37 [SPEAKER_02]: So, 3:38 [SPEAKER_02]: though a disclosing sexual exploitation, and statistic abuse, networks of abuse, the production of child sexual abuse material, clinicians came together in 1986 to really start to share expertise and start to share best practice and grow the research evidence. 3:56 [SPEAKER_02]: The ISSTD has done that work now for over 30 years and very difficult work. 4:03 [SPEAKER_02]: In the mid 80s, what we saw for therapists and researchers who are working in trauma is a bit of a split for therapists and researchers who just wanted to work. 4:14 [SPEAKER_02]: with what we might call more simple trauma. 4:17 [SPEAKER_02]: So still pretty complex but simple trauma. 4:19 [SPEAKER_02]: So combat veterans, people who have experienced the car accident, people who have experienced trauma in a single incident. 4:27 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there was a split. 4:28 [SPEAKER_02]: This was an area of research that was easy to get funding for because you could get funding through department of veterans affairs. 4:36 [SPEAKER_02]: It was more credible as 4:40 [SPEAKER_02]: was, you know, widely recognized and legitimized. 4:43 [SPEAKER_02]: There was no questions about the credibility of those trauma survivors. 4:46 [SPEAKER_02]: They went off in one direction, and the ICCD has always held open a space for complex trauma and complex society disorders. 4:56 [SPEAKER_02]: I've been involved for about five years. 4:59 [SPEAKER_02]: I came to sit on the scientific committee about five years ago, and I think two years ago I was elected to the Board of Directors. 5:07 [SPEAKER_02]: And so I have a role, then I'm just in, I suppose, the strategic direction and management of the ISSTD. 5:16 [SPEAKER_02]: We have over 1,500 members all around the world. 5:19 [SPEAKER_02]: We're growing every year, huge demand for our education programs. 5:26 [SPEAKER_02]: We do a lot of work, educating therapists and clinicians on how to work effectively with clients with complex trauma. 5:33 [SPEAKER_02]: and to so city disorders. 5:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's an organization that I'm really proud to be a part of and it's an organization, you know, I have a lot of respect for my clinical colleagues because they they really stand by a group of clients that in other areas of mental health practice I think have been pretty poorly treated. 5:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Has Michael has that group been active in the United States? 5:57 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the RSSTD is actually based in the US. 6:00 [SPEAKER_02]: So we are incorporated and in our headquarters is in Washington. 6:03 [SPEAKER_02]: That's our key base of operations and most of our members are US-based. 6:08 [SPEAKER_02]: But we are also sort of growing around the world. 6:11 [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a very active group of RSSTD members here in Australian New Zealand. 6:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Who would be like, what would be the membership made up of? 6:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Or do they include clinicians or do actually include like school counselors or people who are based in, you know, like institutions where children are, daycare providers, how does all that work? 6:42 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great question. 6:43 [SPEAKER_02]: So membership is really open to anyone that has an interest in complex trauma and dissociation. 6:50 [SPEAKER_02]: If people are practising, so if they're engaged in clinical work or therapeutic work, they need it's a requirement of our membership that they are licensed or accredited. 7:00 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm in a manner that's suitable for their juristic 7:02 [SPEAKER_02]: chin and their area of practice. 7:05 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's going to change just depending on who you are, what you do and where you're based and what sort of regulatory framework is in your particular jurisdiction. 7:18 [SPEAKER_02]: And we're also open to people like myself. 7:19 [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I don't practice clinically, I don't see clients, I'm a researcher. 7:24 [SPEAKER_02]: and we're quite keen to engage and build more interdiscipline region. 7:40 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have to evacuate. 7:46 [SPEAKER_02]: That's just a test. 7:53 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. 7:54 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to stay with you until we make sure that you don't have to evacuate. 7:58 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't. 7:59 [SPEAKER_02]: It was a test. 8:01 [SPEAKER_02]: We might just do that again. 8:05 [SPEAKER_00]: That's okay. 8:06 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, certainly, you know, we're getting a lot of interest in trauma and trauma informed care from different professions. 8:15 [SPEAKER_02]: So for example, from teachers and educators. 8:18 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's quite important that the ICCD starts to grow in that direction because ultimately, you know, recovery 8:28 [SPEAKER_02]: promotion of well-being after trauma, particularly for kids. 8:32 [SPEAKER_02]: It's not necessarily going to involve one-to-one care with a therapist. 8:36 [SPEAKER_02]: They need to be in trauma-informed environments, particularly at school. 8:41 [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, if there are teachers, if there are educators who are interested in trauma-informed factors, then I'd really encourage them to get in contact with us. 8:50 [SPEAKER_02]: We can start talking about, yeah, about their interest in and how we can help 8:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Michael, we know that you're also involved with an organization called Child Abuse Prevention Service Australia. 9:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us what you do with them and why they were formed? 9:06 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so CAPS has been around since the early 70s. 9:10 [SPEAKER_02]: So it really formed at the moment that Australia, and I think most of the Western world started to become a cutely aware of child abuse as a threat to health and well-being. 9:22 [SPEAKER_02]: I've been a patron of CAPS for the last 12 months, and I work with them around their program development, historically, 9:33 [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of their work has been going to schools, delivering workshops to teachers and students about about abuse prevention and recognizing the signs of child abuse. 9:45 [SPEAKER_02]: We're interested, I guess, in more diverse ways of preventing abuse. 9:51 [SPEAKER_02]: And at the moment, looking particularly at how we can start to embed health and welfare responses to kids in a school environment. 10:00 [SPEAKER_02]: But at the moment, the kids to receive health care, it's actually a pretty high kind of barrier because it requires their parents to literally take them to a health care provider. 10:14 [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of reasons why that might not happen, particularly if you have a parent who might be incapacitated or abusive. 10:22 [SPEAKER_02]: But we're interested in the ways that we can 10:25 [SPEAKER_02]: in bad health and welfare responses to kids in the school. 10:28 [SPEAKER_02]: So the kids are just getting the help that they need as they need it. 10:32 [SPEAKER_02]: And in Australia, we do have an issue with, we have mandatory reporting here in Australia, which means that any suspicion of abuse, many professionals are required to record that directly to child protection authorities. 10:48 [SPEAKER_02]: But we have so many reports that our child protection system 10:53 [SPEAKER_02]: and kids just aren't getting an early intervention or the issue for their escalates to a really acute point. 11:01 [SPEAKER_02]: So we're interested in how we can support kids and support families in a really holistic way. 11:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Without putting all of the burden on to parents, per se, it's actually get their kid in the car and take them to a healthcare provider. 11:16 [SPEAKER_02]: But also how do we support those kids where we can't rely on their parents to keep them 11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: fascinating because I was an elementary teacher for years years and years and as a teacher here I was also a mandatory reporter and I can remember I mean I would lose my license if I didn't report and I had to report suspected child abuse or child neglect and if social services did not take the child out of the home that day that child and it could have been a kindergarten student 11:50 [SPEAKER_00]: to the abusive home so it's very difficult for teachers to be able to grapple with the fact that they may be sending a child home into the situation that they just disclosed and I don't know an easy answer for that except that you know social services has to be much more I think active in removing kids right away even if it's to I felt like taking the kids home with myself. 12:17 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if the other issue is that social service intervention is quite stigmatized and stigmatizing the family. 12:25 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's very embarrassing to have a social service intervention. 12:29 [SPEAKER_02]: And so one of our questions is, if the education environment was quite holistic and there was health services and social services, just as a normal part of the school environment, 12:41 [SPEAKER_02]: But to really kind of take that that punitive stigmatizing aspect away because and also intervening early so whatever's going on for that he doesn't escalate to the point of removal. 12:53 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, in my country, you know, we have a significant proportion of First Nations people to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and, you know, my government was actively involved in the genocide of removal of children from Aboriginal families, you know, right up until the late 60s, early 70s. 13:12 [SPEAKER_02]: And we continue to see quite high rates of child removal from Aboriginal families because of intergenerational trauma and intergenerational poverty as a result of previous government policies and you know contemporary racism within someone. 13:32 [SPEAKER_02]: For Aboriginal families and I think for many disadvantaged communities, just actually reactivates into generational trauma and means that their kids when they grow up are more likely to be removed. 13:44 [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, we need to look at kind of alternative ways of supporting families, but still, of course, I think undoubtedly removing kids where parents are simply unable to provide for them or refusing them. 13:58 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a tricky situation, isn't it? 14:01 [SPEAKER_02]: No, there's no easy answers, but you know, trauma is really at the heart of this. 14:06 [SPEAKER_02]: And even when we're looking at, you know, offenders who are really serious offenders against kids, you know, when you look back at their childhood, it's often not a surprise. 14:16 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's not an excuse, but it's not a surprise. 14:19 [SPEAKER_02]: These are typically people that have had very disrupted and perverse childhood. 14:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Michael, you mentioned how in Australia, everyone is required to report abuse. 14:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Are there any exceptions to that? 14:33 [SPEAKER_02]: So, mandatory reporting is specifically for all professionals and we're not, nobody's exempt from that, and that includes me, for example, so I'm undertaking research and I'm provided with information that identifies a child that 14:55 [SPEAKER_02]: authorities. 14:56 [SPEAKER_02]: There's currently a piece to be some exemptions for priests in the confessional Catholic priests and an ongoing debate around that we've had one state that has removed the confessional seal and requires priests to report sexual abuse that's disclosed to them in in confession. 15:16 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember no ongoing discussion here. 15:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you explain to those of us who 15:23 [SPEAKER_00]: How Australia is set up what you mean by state that you said there's one state. 15:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so so quite similar to the US, so obviously we've got the federal government or what we call the Commonwealth government. 15:37 [SPEAKER_02]: So that's the overarching national government. 15:40 [SPEAKER_02]: We have the states that you know that constitute the country and have their own state 15:52 [SPEAKER_00]: which state has removed that seal of confession. 15:57 [SPEAKER_02]: So Victoria is my understanding, Victoria being probably our most liberal and progressive state. 16:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we like Victoria. 16:07 [SPEAKER_01]: they're getting. 16:08 [SPEAKER_01]: The reason I asked was because here in the United States, each state has their own requirements, so not all states, not everyone is required to report. 16:19 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, in Maryland, where Jim is, of course, where this entire story is about, they actually do have in their law, 16:29 [SPEAKER_01]: a specific language that allows an exception for priests for the very confessional that you were mentioning. 16:37 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's interesting that you guys over there are recognizing that as well. 16:41 [SPEAKER_00]: When the other hand, yeah, when the other hand, all adults in Maryland are mandatory reporters. 16:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So anybody over the age of 18, so for example, if someone contacts me and tells me that they, let's say, for example, they were abused by the priest at Archbishop Kio high school, I have to tell them that if they share that with me, I'm a mandatory reporter. 17:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, a lot of people come to me before they go to the police because they sort of don't know what to do and they all think um lawyer law enforcement counselor like 8,000 things i'm not but i really have to be honest with them and tell them if you're going to share this with me I have to report it so it's it's a difficult balancing act but 17:35 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and there's been the case in Australia historically as well. 17:40 [SPEAKER_02]: And we've just had a very large public inquiry, national public inquiry into the sexual abuse of keyton institution. 17:47 [SPEAKER_02]: And so this is called a Royal Commission. 17:49 [SPEAKER_02]: And a Royal Commission has certain legislative powers that no other public inquiry has, including it's able to coerce with the citizen it's able to require the production of documentation, basically 18:04 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's an unprecedented inquiry. 18:09 [SPEAKER_02]: It actually cost about half a billion dollars Australian. 18:14 [SPEAKER_02]: And so we did have a number of cases here where there were clergy abusers, who were abusing kids and then going to confessional and being, you know, but they're with theologically being expunged of that sin and then returning back to abuse kids and then going to confessional. 18:33 [SPEAKER_02]: to purify themselves. 18:35 [SPEAKER_02]: And in one case, for one very prolific offender, this happened hundreds of times. 18:40 [SPEAKER_02]: And so there was concern raised by the rural commissioners that confession was actually facilitating pedophiles to sexually abuse children. 18:51 [SPEAKER_02]: And so they recommended the removal of any legislative protection around the confessional seal. 18:58 [SPEAKER_02]: That's been quite controversial. 19:03 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to present then. 19:10 [SPEAKER_01]: life can get overwhelming and talking to someone can make all the difference. 19:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Better help, the sponsor of this episode, make starting therapy simple. 19:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Complete a short questionnaire and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist and as little as a couple of days. 19:29 [SPEAKER_01]: You can connect by message, phone or video, from wherever you feel comfortable. 19:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And if the first therapist isn't the right fit, 19:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Better help include a journal for personal reflection and daily group sessions on a variety of topics and they accept each essay and FSA cards. 19:51 [SPEAKER_01]: with over 2,000,000 users, and a 4. star rating on trust pilot. 19:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Better help is a trusted platform for accessible mental health care. 20:01 [SPEAKER_01]: If you think you could benefit from therapy, visit betterhelp.com, choose our podcast during sign-up, and get 10% off your first month. 20:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Taking care of your mental health is a sign of strength. 20:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Start your journey today. 20:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it's, I think as you said, Victoria has removed the seal of confession and that's enlightening, but if you, when you think about that it's actually exacerbating the situation, you do something bad and then you get forgiven and then you do a bad and you get forgiven. 20:39 [SPEAKER_00]: talk about a vicious cycle that needs to stop, right? 20:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's going on here too. 20:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, Michael, we are aware that you're listed as an advisor for the E-save safety office. 20:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you talk about that a little bit? 20:55 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sure. 20:56 [SPEAKER_02]: So the opposite of the safety commissioner is quite a unique agency here in Australia with statutory powers to require the removal of a legal or harmful content, so that includes child sexual abuse material and also known consentual images of adult. 21:17 [SPEAKER_02]: So the East Safety Commission has a range of powers actually under law that she's in power to enact. 21:25 [SPEAKER_02]: They're really a fantastic office because you're a child if you are, you know, they're the caregiver of a child if you're an adult. 21:32 [SPEAKER_02]: who gets into travel online and that includes the kids that include cyber bullying, for example, then you can contact the office and they have case managers who will basically manage your case and liais with social media platforms and with internet service providers to ensure the removal of the harmful content. 21:53 [SPEAKER_02]: So there's really no office like it in the world and they're very effective, once they've been contacted by victims, they're very effective at reducing the harm of online abuse and online harassment. 22:05 [SPEAKER_02]: So I've been appointed this year to their advisory. 22:09 [SPEAKER_02]: community, particularly around the issue of child sexual abuse material, how we might more effectively disrupt people's access to child sexual abuse material, and also what would have been focused response to survivors of child sexual abuse material, what would have been focused response to the play? 22:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Michael, you're also listed as an advisor for Protect Children, and you tell us what 22:36 [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm also going to advise it to the Canadian Center for Child Protection, which is a truly incredible charity based in Winnipeg in Canada. 22:45 [SPEAKER_02]: The Canadian Center runs the TIP line in Canada, which takes reports from the public of online child abuse and sexual exploitation. 22:56 [SPEAKER_02]: They also run prevention programs through Canadian schools to prevent abuse 23:01 [SPEAKER_02]: and they also work with the families of Dr. Children. 23:05 [SPEAKER_02]: So they're quite an interesting organization that works really at the acute end of the child protection. 23:11 [SPEAKER_02]: Can I instant a couple of years ago create a piece of software? 23:16 [SPEAKER_02]: And Iraq need has revolutionised the global response to child sexual abuse material. 23:23 [SPEAKER_02]: It's able to automatically detect and request the removal of illegal images of children that we know of. 23:32 [SPEAKER_02]: So images that have already been classified as child pornography. 23:36 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's able to automatically, 23:39 [SPEAKER_02]: detect them and request removal, but it also uses machine learning to detect similar images. 23:46 [SPEAKER_02]: So Iraq need has been able to not only detect no images but detect those images that are very similar to no images, so it's been able to create. 23:54 [SPEAKER_02]: a full picture of all of the images associated with the particular incident of the abuse. 24:02 [SPEAKER_02]: So in the past, perhaps, police and into poll might have known of a couple of images of that abuse child. 24:08 [SPEAKER_02]: I reckon it has been able to collate a hundred or 150 that are being circulated by offenders. 24:16 [SPEAKER_02]: So that's given the Canadian Center a very broad bird's eye view of the extent of the global trade in child sexual abuse material, and also with a high degree of accuracy to detect where that material is, where it's being circulated, but also because a right need automatically requests removal, so it sends take down notifications to internet service providers. 24:40 [SPEAKER_02]: It's able to detect who is keeping 24:44 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's also able to detect those criminal internet service providers and tech companies who are actually facilitating the trade and child sexual material. 24:54 [SPEAKER_02]: So I've been working with the Canadian Center now for probably about three years. 24:59 [SPEAKER_02]: really amazing organization, they do incredible work with victims and survivors of child sexual abuse material, they put together an advocacy group of young women whose abuse was recorded and distributed in childhood, they called the Phoenix 11. 25:15 [SPEAKER_02]: And the Phoenix 11, their identities are anonymous, but the Canadians are to support them, to fly all around the world, to speak, to met, to ministers, to make, you know, major decision makers to talk about the impact of child sexual abuse material on their lives, and it's really just transformed how we think and react to the issue. 25:39 [SPEAKER_02]: It's been incredible. 25:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Michael, we know that you also have your own website called organized abuse, and I want to make sure our American listeners know that the word organized is spelled with an S on your website so that they can find it, can you talk about that for us, please. 25:59 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I set up organized to abuse.com, three or four years ago, I'm really as a bit of a placeholder for the issue. 26:09 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just where I give some basic information on about organized abuse and also just collate all of the work that I've done on the papers that I've published. 26:18 [SPEAKER_02]: I have a blog there that's not updated very frequently. 26:22 [SPEAKER_02]: I came to this area of work, not by choice. 26:26 [SPEAKER_02]: I came to it really my late team. 26:29 [SPEAKER_02]: So in the late 90s, I met a young woman who was a victim of organized abuse. 26:34 [SPEAKER_02]: We were both still teenagers. 26:36 [SPEAKER_02]: She was being abused at the time. 26:39 [SPEAKER_02]: There was a large police investigation. 26:42 [SPEAKER_02]: unfolding over a couple of years into the alleged perpetrators in that case, there are a number of other young women who were disclosing the same type of abuse by the same people. 26:56 [SPEAKER_02]: They'd been a number of child protection investigations into those allegations in the preceding ten years, none of which had resulted in any criminal prosecutions. 27:05 [SPEAKER_02]: And so, just through my association with her, I was sort of pulled into a pretty dark, dark world, and Gemma can probably relate to this experience. 27:18 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's ultimately what sort of set me on the path to becoming a criminologist and doing the work that I now do for a living. 27:26 [SPEAKER_02]: So, the website is really just about 27:30 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, holding a space online for this issue and really flagging for people to organize abuse takes place, that there is evidence for it, that there is peer reviews and legitimate scholarly publications and I also I get a fair amount of contact. 27:49 [SPEAKER_02]: From individuals through through that website, who contact me through the site, just to talk about what's going on for them. 27:56 [SPEAKER_02]: Some of them are survivors, some of them are professionals who are looking for more support. 28:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Michael our discussion today is a result of us coming across the tweet that you had made on December 29, 2019 for listeners who might be listening to this late. 28:13 [SPEAKER_01]: That's where it'll read it really quick before we go into our next question. 28:16 [SPEAKER_01]: You had said, a false memory syndrome foundation is officially dissolved tomorrow. 28:22 [SPEAKER_01]: It was launched 27 years ago claiming that adults disclosing child sexual abuse are suffering from a syndrome, or unquote, a vivid false memories of abuse. 28:41 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so the first recent home foundation was formed in the United States in 1992 by a married couple called Pamela and Peter Fried. 28:53 [SPEAKER_02]: In the couple of years before the formation of the foundation, 28:59 [SPEAKER_02]: And they had become aware that their daughter Jennifer Fried had disclosed sexual abuse by Peter to Jennifer's then husband and they've been a confrontation between Jennifer's husband and Jennifer's parents in which her husband informed the parents that what Jennifer had 29:25 [SPEAKER_02]: And essentially, the Freud's retaliated against their daughter, Jennifer, was an ease of professor of psychology. 29:34 [SPEAKER_02]: She's actually an expert in the psychology of memory. 29:38 [SPEAKER_02]: Jennifer's a fantastic scholar. 29:41 [SPEAKER_02]: She is a pioneer in the complex trauma field. 29:46 [SPEAKER_02]: She is the editor of the Journal of 29:52 [SPEAKER_02]: She at the time was based on university her parents contacted all of her colleagues the suggestion that Jennifer was mentally ill and then with the formation of the foundation they actively recruited members of her own school as well as a range of other academics psychologists into a foundation. 30:13 [SPEAKER_02]: And the Foundation claimed that many allegations of child abuse made by adults were the product of therapeutic malpractice. 30:24 [SPEAKER_02]: The first one we soon in Foundation claimed that therapists were inducing or implanting 30:31 [SPEAKER_02]: given memories of abuse and vulnerable adults and then encouraging those adults to accuse other innocent adults often their parents of abuse. 30:42 [SPEAKER_02]: It's important to understand the context here in the early 90s in the United States. 30:47 [SPEAKER_02]: There have been a range of successful law reform efforts 30:55 [SPEAKER_02]: both criminal matters and civil matters or child sexual abuse cases, so that adults could seek damages or make reports of sexual abuse that are taking place in early childhood that they had been a delay in report, in some cases because of traumatic amnesia. 31:17 [SPEAKER_02]: It's very common in both children and adults who experience trauma, that they experience the partial or full-amnesia for the traumatic event. 31:26 [SPEAKER_02]: This has been observed since World War I, where in some cases in World War I, you know, 30% of return servicemen had some evidence of amnesia for combat. 31:38 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's very well known that amnesia is one of the symptoms of trauma. 31:47 [SPEAKER_02]: to challenge these law reform strategies and to create a defense for adults mainly men, accused of sexually abusing children where the complainant was an adult. 32:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Which brings us to the capers? 32:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Michael, I have a feeling you've seen some of it. 32:08 [SPEAKER_00]: All of it, can you give us your perspective, one? 32:11 [SPEAKER_00]: what you saw and what were your thoughts when you watched? 32:15 [SPEAKER_02]: Look, I found the keep is incredibly moving. 32:18 [SPEAKER_02]: I found it incredibly compelling. 32:21 [SPEAKER_02]: I was very angry. 32:27 [SPEAKER_02]: the right way to put it particularly towards the end of the show. 32:35 [SPEAKER_02]: I've interviewed probably over 50 survivors of organised abuse and there was a lot of similarities between, I suppose, the plight of some of the key figures in the keepers and many of the women 32:54 [SPEAKER_02]: not only of their own severe sexual exploitation, but other criminal activity that's taken place, you know, in association with their own abuse and they've, you know, very much reported that criminal activity in good faith and then been re-victimised. 33:13 [SPEAKER_02]: by police and the justice system because of a lack of faith in their testimony and the way in which you know the pseudo science that false memories has been used to justify stereotypes about you know women being crazy and women being liars and being fantasists so 33:37 [SPEAKER_02]: unravel through the course of the keepers, and then ultimately to be presented with pretty strong evidence that there was figures in the keepers who were, who were speaking the truth, you know, I found that very moving and very, yeah. 33:52 [SPEAKER_02]: frustrating and also, you know, I was really amazed that this story was bought to light and I think it's it's how the huge effect on the public understanding and public willingness to think more broadly about these sorts of cases. 34:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Michael, are you familiar with Paul McCue? 34:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I am. 34:17 [SPEAKER_02]: Yep. 34:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. 34:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, he was instrumental in the early 90s of how can I say this? 34:32 [SPEAKER_00]: He testified that the women who came forward to accuse the church, the school, the priest, the gynecologist of abuse, 34:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He claimed that they were suffering from false memory syndrome. 34:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And we have found more recently that he is actually one of the individuals who worked at Johns Hopkins as part of the M.K. 35:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Ultra program. 35:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Are you familiar with M.K. 35:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Ultra? 35:05 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, yes. 35:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. 35:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So, one of our survivors, Jean Lainer, who was Jane Doe, 35:13 [SPEAKER_00]: question recently when we found this out as to whether or not that would have been a conflict of. 35:20 [SPEAKER_00]: of interest, and I think it obviously would have, but we want you to be honest, we don't sense or anything. 35:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So we are interested in your thoughts about him and his involvement with the Do Roques, which was Dean Wainer and Teresa Lancaster in the early 90s, along with his involvement in MKL truck. 35:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have some thoughts on that? 35:45 [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I can't, I don't have any particular sort of insight into make you went and and you know, any sort of government funded research that you might have been undertaking your Hopkins. 36:01 [SPEAKER_02]: I think that there's, it's important to sort of think about this in a historical context. 36:07 [SPEAKER_02]: Certainly, the view of human psychology that was weaponized in the cold or not only by the United States, but we saw the weaponization of this view right across the globe by the major powers at the time. 36:28 [SPEAKER_02]: And was that essentially that the human mind was comparable to a machine. 36:33 [SPEAKER_02]: So the brain functions like a computer and the mind is sort of like the software or something like this. 36:40 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's incredibly sort of mechanical understanding of human psychology. 36:45 [SPEAKER_02]: And this view was implemented not only in the Cold War and in the military industrial complex, but it was implemented right across the very mainstream mental health 36:59 [SPEAKER_02]: And this is where we see notions in the 50s and the 60s emerging around, you know, notions of brainwashing, notions of mind control, I'm notions of programming and deep programming. 37:15 [SPEAKER_02]: mind, which were just incredibly destructive. 37:20 [SPEAKER_02]: It's no great surprise that prominent, you know, prominent psychologists and psychiatrists at some of the best research institutions, I mean the US were receiving government funding to do a related work as part of, you know, as part of sort of a broader set of projects. 37:40 [SPEAKER_02]: There was a lot of money that was coming through 37:45 [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, McEugh very much reflects a very, he reflects us like I addressed off his generation. 37:52 [SPEAKER_02]: He's a deeply conservative individual. 37:54 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he's still with us today. 37:56 [SPEAKER_02]: He opposed marriage equality. 37:59 [SPEAKER_02]: He was a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church. 38:03 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm all through the sexual abuse scandals and testified independence. 38:07 [SPEAKER_02]: of pre-suing now, no, up were very serious and prolific sex offenders and he was an expert with this in their defense in the mid-90s. 38:17 [SPEAKER_02]: And he also bought with him, I think, to the false memory syndrome foundation, you know, a set of convictions, not only about how the mind works, which is a very kind of quite mechanical, very mechanical view of the human subject, but also, you know, he was very suspicious. 38:39 [SPEAKER_02]: of the revolution in, you know, I think I'm suggesting, I don't have particularly insight, but he seems to have been quite suspicious about the revolution in mental health that had been thought about by the child abuse movement and the trauma movement. 38:56 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it wasn't direct challenge to the paradigm of psychiatry that his entire career was based on. 39:03 [SPEAKER_02]: And he was a very vocal opponent of movements of feminists, movements of adult women who were seeking justice as a result of early childhood trauma. 39:26 [SPEAKER_02]: You see, well, he was an advisor, I was a very early advisor, he bought a lot of credibility to the false memory syndrome foundation, you know, the name of John Hopkins, you know, has a lot of currency there early, I think it was the first false memory syndrome foundation. 39:44 [SPEAKER_02]: conference was co-sponsored by John Hopkins. 39:48 [SPEAKER_02]: He really bought a lot of weight and a lot of heft to the movement. 39:53 [SPEAKER_02]: It's also worth recognising that for many of these prominent supporters, academic supporters of the false members syndrome foundation. 40:02 [SPEAKER_02]: Throughout the 1990s, they were appearing in college, very regularly for in high profile cases for men who have been accused of 40:11 [SPEAKER_02]: It's actually, you said they were offering an expert defense testimony in court that would have been supportive of the argument of the defense. 40:26 [SPEAKER_02]: And they were paid 40:27 [SPEAKER_02]: to do so. 40:28 [SPEAKER_02]: It was quite lucrative through the 90s to act as an expert defense witness. 40:33 [SPEAKER_02]: I can't speak specifically about McHugh, but we know of other expert defense witnesses, like Elizabeth Lothus, who proudly announced in the mid 90s that she was charging the same amount per hour for expert testimony that I top tier lawyer would charge. 40:54 [SPEAKER_02]: So at that point 40:57 [SPEAKER_02]: You know academics and we're fairly well paid, but you know we don't, you know, we're not, you know, we're not, you know, we don't have a lot of opportunities to make large amounts of external money that's true for most of us and we're talking about people who were, we're walking away from cases with tens of thousands of dollars. 41:17 [SPEAKER_02]: in extra income. 41:19 [SPEAKER_02]: That's that's pretty significant. 41:21 [SPEAKER_02]: And the false we received on foundation was a bit of a clearing house for that. 41:25 [SPEAKER_02]: So, if you're an academic, he was connected to the false we received on foundation. 41:29 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, they also had a lot of defense lawyers associated with the foundation who were very actively involved in the foundation. 41:36 [SPEAKER_02]: And so the the foundation was able, if you came in with the complaint, so you'd been accused of 41:42 [SPEAKER_02]: they could connect you with the lawyer, they could connect you with an expert, a set of expert, with the says, and as long as you had the money, and this is pretty expensive, but if you had the money, then you had a pretty good defense strategy right there. 41:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Point to us, how or why the false memories and wrong foundation flows down? 42:04 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, look, I think it, I think I shut down for a few reasons. 42:10 [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't very good at generational renewal. 42:14 [SPEAKER_02]: So really, Pamela and Peter never ended the reigns of Osmemistina Foundation to kind of the next generation that there was no, there doesn't seem to be any attempt within your organization. 42:28 [SPEAKER_02]: to seek other people to kind of lead the organization. 42:33 [SPEAKER_02]: So more or less it's been essentially inactive for over 10 years now and the closure was really just a formality I think that would have 42:51 [SPEAKER_02]: you know, it's interesting by the early nauties, the false memory syndrome foundation is kind of claiming victory. 42:57 [SPEAKER_02]: And when we have people like Miku saying in the early nauties, so 2002, 2003, you know, we won, we won this debate on everyone accepts that false memories is real, on everyone accepts that recovered memories and traumatic combinations. 43:12 [SPEAKER_02]: don't exist in their files. 43:15 [SPEAKER_02]: The irony is that the opposite is true. 43:18 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's been recent surveys undertaken by academic false memory proponents where they've gone out and they've asked 43:27 [SPEAKER_02]: there are persons law enforcement and other professionals. 43:30 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, do you believe in recovered memories? 43:32 [SPEAKER_02]: And they've said yes, we do. 43:34 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, the majority of people that work with the work at the frontline with traumatized people that work at the frontline with allegations of abuse, they deal with traumatic ammunition and recovered memories all at all the time. 43:47 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just a routine part of doing this work. 43:51 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think the false memories in your information 43:56 [SPEAKER_02]: that they won the battle and there's no need for them anymore. 44:01 [SPEAKER_02]: But it's actually the opposite is true. 44:04 [SPEAKER_02]: And I have to say, you know, frankly, my side won the thing, but my side won the memory was, traumatic and nature is simply just part of mainstream psychology these days. 44:16 [SPEAKER_02]: My understanding is the British fossil memory society, I still go in, they received, uh, my understanding is that they received a substantial endowment in the 1990s that they continued to, to, to live off. 44:31 [SPEAKER_02]: One thing we don't have good, uh, insight into is, um, kind of the financial backing of the financial support of the fossil memory movements. 44:41 [SPEAKER_02]: It's certainly something that would be good to dig into. 44:44 [SPEAKER_02]: Because even in the US, I mean, in 2010, when the false masonry foundation was essentially to fund. 44:53 [SPEAKER_02]: But they received a $100,000. 44:58 [SPEAKER_02]: donation from a deceased estate, from a professor who passed away and left him 100,000 dollars. 45:05 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's enabled them to set up and run an archive, an archive of the false members in owned foundation. 45:15 [SPEAKER_02]: So in fact, you know, if you receive permission, you can go and you can examine their documentation and I was speaking to a journalist last week who's done exactly that I'm flowing out to examine received permission to examine the archives and clear out to examine the archives. 45:33 [SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, you know, as someone who's fairly active in the non-for-profit sector, it's pretty rare to receive a donation of 100,000 dollars US. 45:42 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just interesting that this issue, you know, attracted so much passion and frankly, you know, money from individuals in the community. 45:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you don't have to respond to this because this is going to not go over well with some people, but the first thing I thought of when you said that was that maybe that deceased person was a pedophile or maybe the money came from the Catholic church. 46:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's move on. 46:13 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, actually, I mean, interestingly, he is a named, I mean, he's a named donor. 46:19 [SPEAKER_02]: So you can actually find out, you can actually find out who he is. 46:23 [SPEAKER_02]: It is a public. 46:25 [SPEAKER_02]: And he, Pamela Fried stated in 2010 that he'd been, he'd long been involved and closely involved and closely interested in the thoughts where he's, you know, foundation problems from its early days. 46:38 [SPEAKER_02]: And then actually, it's a punny's passing 46:43 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, so in terms of the public record, we have no evidence of his involvement until that time, but it was an issue that he felt strong enough that upon his passing, he left a really, you know, a very, very substantial equipment, a possible reason to know. 47:02 [SPEAKER_02]: And I will say, 47:06 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I previously sat on the board of directors of an organization here in Australia called Adolfs of I'm in Child Abuse. 47:14 [SPEAKER_02]: It's now called the Clean Up Foundation. 47:16 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we would have been amazing. 47:20 [SPEAKER_02]: to get donations of that kind, but abuse of either movement often the people that we appeal to often have struggled in their life because of the impact of abuse on their muffin. 47:37 [SPEAKER_02]: There's been disruption to their education and their employment. 47:40 [SPEAKER_02]: They're not in a position to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cause of trauma recovery. 47:48 [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, unfortunately, we just don't see wealthy donors come forward in that way and it is a real asymmetry for us. 47:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Michael, you had mentioned earlier, Johns Hopkins, and before I ask you this, we know for a fact that Johns Hopkins was involved with the MK Ultra programs because of financial documents. 48:07 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting, did I hear you say that they were also involved with the false memory foundation? 48:13 [SPEAKER_02]: So certainly, it looks like through McEuse, you know, role at John Hopkins, he was very senior there, it was a departmental chair that there was, for example, co-sponsorship of the first post and every single foundation conference in the early 90s. 48:34 [SPEAKER_02]: and for, you know, for a not-for-profit that's establishing itself to have that color and of sponsorship and that color and of promotion from from such a legitimate organization. 48:45 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's that's gold, you know, that that really puts you on the national and international agenda. 48:51 [SPEAKER_02]: And certainly the false wisdom and foundation enjoyed that kind of advocacy and sponsorship from academics in a range, I'll very well regard it, I believe, and research institutions in the US. 49:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Talk about a conflict of interest though, if they're already involved with a federal program. 49:13 [SPEAKER_01]: that tries to help manipulate memories, and then they also have someone seeing you're on the board of their school or of Johns Hopkins, who's also a part of the false memory foundation. 49:28 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I can't speak directly to make use in involvement in particular sort of streams of research in John Hopkins, you know, what I would say is that it's what I would say is this is that if we could implant both memories in adult mental health clients we would because what we would do is we would implant them with memories of happy childhoods and parents who loved them. 49:56 [SPEAKER_02]: And this would resolve so, so much of the pain and the suffering and the agony that we see when we work with adult survivors of child abuse. 50:10 [SPEAKER_02]: They desperately want to have false memories of a loving supportive childhood. 50:20 [SPEAKER_02]: I have to be frank with you, recovery from childhood trauma and for many people is a very, very difficult pathway. 50:30 [SPEAKER_02]: And if it was possible to take a short cut like implanting false memories, I think ethically we would be impelled to do so. 50:39 [SPEAKER_02]: It is 50:40 [SPEAKER_02]: It is impossible to implant vivid false memories of childhood events in adults that have never taken place. 50:54 [SPEAKER_02]: It is simply impossible to do it and if it was possible, we would do it because it would relieve so much suffering. 51:03 [SPEAKER_01]: That's a great point because I'm pretty sure almost everyone listening has something in their life that 51:08 [SPEAKER_01]: That happened in the past that we all would go to some more and to forget it and replace those memories of free because that was a great point. 51:17 [SPEAKER_01]: I was actually talking with Len Schurmer earlier this morning and she mentioned that you guys know each other. 51:21 [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to ask really quick how you guys know each other, but before I do that for the listeners who don't remember who Lynn is. 51:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Lynn we actually interviewed for our podcast, she's a survivor who was able to link the MK ultra program. 51:36 [SPEAKER_01]: to someone in masquerals abuse organization, involved more. 51:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Lim was able to identify one of the abusers in the program as the kind of colleges that masqueror brought from the KEO girls, girls too. 51:49 [SPEAKER_01]: So Michael, can you tell us how you met Lynn? 51:52 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so this was sort of before I worked professionally in this space and, you know, I came in as I mentioned, I came in through a friend of mine. 52:04 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we met when I was in my late teens and it was in the it was around sort of 2002 2003 that the abuse case of hers actually hit the headlines here in Australia. 52:18 [SPEAKER_02]: And I became aware of a larger cohort of young women who were disclosing the same type of abuse in the same details that she'd been talking about with some degree to me for a couple of years. 52:33 [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, at the time there was just no way there was no way to go. 52:38 [SPEAKER_02]: There was no one to talk to, you know, my friend couldn't access mental health care that there wasn't. 52:44 [SPEAKER_02]: It just was nowhere to go. 52:46 [SPEAKER_02]: So I went online, you know, if you're in your early 20s, it's 2002 2003, you know, where do you go and you go online? 52:54 [SPEAKER_02]: And there was this really interesting discussion for 52:57 [SPEAKER_02]: At the time, it was called, I'm a rigorous intuition, and it was run by a Canadian blogger called Jeff Wells, and Wells was just kind of an interesting guy who was just bringing together, you know, a lot of these kind of loose pieces of evidence just to talk about the fact that, you know, some issues that have been dismissing the 90s as a conspiracy theory. 53:21 [SPEAKER_02]: you know issues like organised abuse and ritual abuse, there wasn't empirical evidence, there was strong counter evidence to suggest that some of these allegations had substance. 53:31 [SPEAKER_02]: So he ran a fairly kind of active discussion board and that's where I met Lynn. 53:38 [SPEAKER_02]: And I remember it fairly vividly because it was a time in my life I was in a lot of distress. 53:43 [SPEAKER_02]: I had not a support. 53:46 [SPEAKER_02]: My friend was in a lot of distress and at the time she was still being 53:52 [SPEAKER_02]: group of men. 53:53 [SPEAKER_02]: And I just want to be clear, I had no understanding what the hell was going on. 53:58 [SPEAKER_02]: I just couldn't understand it. 54:00 [SPEAKER_02]: I had no, I didn't know what it was. 54:02 [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know what my friend wouldn't go to. 54:05 [SPEAKER_02]: At least, I didn't know why she couldn't keep us safe. 54:08 [SPEAKER_02]: That, you know, serious threats have been made to me in one pretty acute incident. 54:15 [SPEAKER_02]: My house had been broken into animal blood have been splashed on the walls, animal organs have been left in my bed. 54:24 [SPEAKER_02]: We had cats left on our front door, like really pretty scary stuff. 54:30 [SPEAKER_02]: And I was sort of melting down online and limb was someone that reached out and she was someone 54:39 [SPEAKER_02]: really understood where I was at and offered me a lot of support and understanding. 54:46 [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, she was really one of the first sort of really sensible voices in this space that I have heard. 54:54 [SPEAKER_02]: She was really, really caring and supportive and so that's always, you know, stayed with me. 55:02 [SPEAKER_02]: So you know, I've had the chat, you know, we've been in touch for 15 years. 55:05 [SPEAKER_02]: And I've, you know, I had the chance to meet Lynn and she's an amazing artist. 55:11 [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone should go to lynchermed.com and and look at her and her art and also buy her art. 55:18 [SPEAKER_02]: When I visited her, I was lucky enough just to buy a couple of small pieces. 55:23 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm looking at them now. 55:25 [SPEAKER_02]: I've got some of her art on my walls and lens just someone that I take really seriously. 55:32 [SPEAKER_02]: and someone that I've learned a lot from and I've got a little respectful. 55:35 [SPEAKER_00]: We love Lynn. 55:36 [SPEAKER_00]: She she's been really become an integral part of our podcast community because she has done several episodes with us as has her very special therapist. 55:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And we just we think she's incredible. 55:53 [SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about our artwork, we posted some of it online, so I really feel like she's been a gift to all of us, but I'm going to change the topic here for a minute, we understand from the New York Times Michael that you sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, can you tell us what that was about? 56:17 [SPEAKER_02]: So this is an open letter. 56:19 [SPEAKER_02]: It was spearheaded by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the United Kingdom, which is really sort of the lead charity in the UK around top protection in, you know, their a fantastic organization. 56:33 [SPEAKER_02]: They've been 56:34 [SPEAKER_02]: really brilliant on the issue of child exploitation and organised abuse since the 1980s. 56:42 [SPEAKER_02]: There have been a I think alone voice of sanity in this space. 56:46 [SPEAKER_02]: They're really at the cutting edge in terms of the threat that the tech industry poses to children and the fact that to be a 57:01 [SPEAKER_02]: certainly talk the talk when it comes to child protection. 57:04 [SPEAKER_02]: They are not walking the walk around their commercial decision making. 57:12 [SPEAKER_02]: Facebook at the moment is a pretty good actor around child exploitation. 57:18 [SPEAKER_02]: So 57:18 [SPEAKER_02]: They're quite active in detecting child abuse material and child grooming on their platform in a way that other social media platforms are. 57:28 [SPEAKER_02]: So they're reporting large amounts of child abuse and exploitation on Facebook. 57:34 [SPEAKER_02]: It's happening on other platforms, are just less active in detecting and reporting. 57:42 [SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, what Facebook has said they're going to do is to implement what's called end-to-end encryption for their messenger platform. 57:51 [SPEAKER_02]: So messenger is the direct message like chat function. 57:56 [SPEAKER_02]: on Facebook. 57:57 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's where you can talk to someone one to one. 58:01 [SPEAKER_02]: And what they're saying is that they're going to encrypt that and it means that Facebook will no longer be able to detect the distribution of child pornography through messenger and it also won't be able to detect child grooming through messenger. 58:18 [SPEAKER_02]: That is going to massively reduce by up to 70% the number of reports of child abuse on Facebook through authorities. 58:27 [SPEAKER_02]: It is going to result in a decrease in worldwide, a decrease in thousands and thousands of arrests every year and prosecutions for child abuse online. 58:40 [SPEAKER_02]: What it's also going to mean is that predators on Facebook at the moment when they're grooming 58:47 [SPEAKER_02]: They then need to convince the child to leave Facebook and go to another platform like what's that or Zoom or Skype in order to then abuse the child who live streaming or through some other means. 59:03 [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be so much easier for the perpetrator if messenger is encrypted because all they need to do is get the child on to messenger inside inside Facebook and then the predator will be able to do whatever they want to that child and nobody will be able to see that and so our so the NSPCC invited myself and invited 59:28 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, 130 other top protection experts and agencies from over 100 countries around the world to sign this open letter and that's been covered by the New York Times and the financial times and the BBC all around the world have been really pleased by the coverage saying very clearly to Mark Zuckerberg. 59:46 [SPEAKER_02]: You cannot encrypt Facebook Messenger unless you put all provisions in place to keep children safe. 59:55 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's going to be our message to him. 60:00 [SPEAKER_02]: If Messenger is encrypted without Child Protection, without Child Protection measures in place to protect kids, we will not stop. 60:11 [SPEAKER_02]: This is simply unacceptable. 60:13 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll make sure to keep following you on Twitter, so that I can see any response that you guys get. 60:18 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, look, this is a really critical issue for us, when we're working in the organized space, you know, for me, I deal with a lot of victims and survivors who were talking about the production of NBCMidges, so that's a real challenge for us. 60:32 [SPEAKER_02]: How can we detect the production of images in face-to-face environments? 60:37 [SPEAKER_02]: There's another piece here which is about disrupting distribution, disrupting predators, reaching out to kids online. 60:45 [SPEAKER_02]: We need to see a lot more engagement from the tech industry. 60:50 [SPEAKER_02]: And as I said at the moment, they tend to walk the walk and then behind the scenes, we just are not seeing evidence that they're taking this seriously enough. 60:59 [SPEAKER_02]: And that they're willing to protect kids over profit. 61:03 [SPEAKER_02]: And at the moment, profit is coming first. 61:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully they'll change their tune. 61:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Did you guys have been so public about this? 61:11 [SPEAKER_02]: Look, I'll certainly say that this is something that has stirred up a lot of concern by the United States government. 61:19 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's ultimately going to be activity by in the United States that's going to change this the majority of tech firms are based in the US. 61:28 [SPEAKER_02]: And that means that they have to work there they're required to abide by US legislation. 61:34 [SPEAKER_02]: So there are, I think, promising moves of foot to increase the regulation of the US tech industry because, you know, for myself in Australia, you know, I can work with government agencies and statutory agencies here. 61:47 [SPEAKER_02]: We can make changes to Australia more, but actually that doesn't have a huge impact on the tech industry because they're mostly US-based. 61:54 [SPEAKER_02]: So, 61:54 [SPEAKER_02]: The US is going to have to lead this and drive this and the more support that we get from civil society and the more support that we get from the community in the US who really understands what's at stake here, the better. 62:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Michael Jim and I for the past more than a year now we've been using our podcast to further try to find out what happened to Sister Kathy one of the major questions we have is could the leader of a large pedophile ring which involved please and Catholic priests could they have killed someone who threatened to expose them with your experience in this field and after watching the keepers do you think that could be possible? 62:33 [SPEAKER_02]: I absolutely think it could be possible, I think there's no doubt. 62:38 [SPEAKER_02]: I think what becomes apparent in a case like the keepers we've had some comparable cases here in Australia is that I think until recently, simply the settings in the criminal justice system have not been right to investigate and prosecute 63:03 [SPEAKER_02]: these kinds of criminal conspiracies. 63:07 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, for example, in my country, when we talk about organoids crime and when we talk about strategic intentional efforts to detect and interrupt organoids crime, in my country, that means outlaw motorcycle game. 63:22 [SPEAKER_02]: That's... 63:23 [SPEAKER_02]: That's been the focus of coordinated law enforcement activity for two decades. 63:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Outlaw motorcycle games now, I'm not saying, not a problem, I'm not saying that we shouldn't target them, but essentially police have set up very specific methodologies in order to investigate and surveil and target this group. 63:47 [SPEAKER_02]: We have never seen in Australia or 63:52 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, really dedicated strategic work that is on the ground by state agencies that is designed to detect and disrupt these kinds of face-to-face abuse networks. 64:06 [SPEAKER_02]: And so when 64:07 [SPEAKER_02]: These cases come to the attention of law enforcement and the justice system it is by accident, or it is through the tireless advocacy of people like yourselves. 64:21 [SPEAKER_02]: Or it's by survivors who just keep pushing the issue until someone finally is in. 64:27 [SPEAKER_02]: So, yes, when we think about organised abuse and pedophile networks as a form of organised crime, when we think about what is at stake for this group of offenders that essentially, you know, discovery of this offending network would effectively mean the end of their lives. 64:48 [SPEAKER_02]: They would be going to prison for the rest of their lives. 64:51 [SPEAKER_02]: These are people that on the whole are very incredibly cold, very calculating, they lack empathy because of the type of abuse that they do. 65:02 [SPEAKER_02]: And certainly people are disposable. 65:05 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm thinking about one case in the UK, an organized abuse case in Cornwall, where a group of offenders were sexually using kids, 65:20 [SPEAKER_02]: And they were distributing hard call onography, we don't know if it was a abuse material, but we certainly know that one of the offenders there, their main source of income was distributing onography, so we can probably draw some conclusions from that. 65:38 [SPEAKER_02]: And they did kill. 65:39 [SPEAKER_02]: one of their co-offenders, so, you know, because they were afraid of, of detection, and they were actually conducted and imprisoned for that murder. 65:49 [SPEAKER_02]: So they are, you know, this is a, a type of a sense, where enough is it stake that, that offenders may well, may well kill someone in order to stay undetected, and I think it would be naive to think otherwise. 66:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Michael, we're going to tie up in a few minutes, but I want to remind our listeners before we do that many states in the United States are now conducting criminal investigations through their attorney general's office and that includes Maryland, so I just want to remind everybody that if you or someone in your family or your friends were abused by clergy. 66:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The focus is on clergy abuse and we can as we always do we will post the contact information because our attorney general is into the second year of this investigation and I think I send somebody to him probably every week. 66:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So please do not hold back if something happened to you. 66:52 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the only way we're going to be able to change the world. 66:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Michael, for you, we have a huge listening audience. 67:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And we also have like 150,000 people on the keepers site, which I stay active on just to make sure everybody is up to speed. 67:09 [SPEAKER_00]: But is there something we as a world can do to help you or that train and I can do 67:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And what are some of the projects you're working on? 67:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to let you finish up. 67:24 [SPEAKER_02]: Look, I'm really pleased to hear that you've got such a large audience. 67:27 [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's fantastic. 67:30 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think... 67:32 [SPEAKER_02]: We can focus both on the specifics of particular cases, but also start to identify what are the gaps? 67:43 [SPEAKER_02]: What do we need to be in place in order for these cognitive investigations to progress more effectively and in order for survivors and the victims to receive more support? 67:56 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think, 67:58 [SPEAKER_02]: The solutions to these issues needs to come from the grassroots, we need to be putting together. 68:04 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, a realistic set of demands and request for, you know, our policy makers, our services, our government that's funded by our taxpayer dollars and we say to them, you know, he's the problems, but this is where we think that the solutions are. 68:19 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think we all have a really important role to play in that kind of advocacy work, not only driving forward these really important cases in investigations and, you know, I really think that the keepers has just been so impressive in that area of work. 68:34 [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, for example here in Australia, we've seen a real shift, I have to say in law enforcement over the last five to ten years, victims and survivors, you know, not everywhere, but on the whole, having a much better experience working with police. 68:49 [SPEAKER_02]: And then in some cases, experiencing issues with prosecutors, once they actually, once charges have been laid, how is the state interacting with victims and survivors? 69:01 [SPEAKER_02]: Our victims and survivors being treated well, because they can be really fragile. 69:05 [SPEAKER_02]: They can be quite vulnerable. 69:07 [SPEAKER_02]: They need to be supported all the way through the investigation process. 69:11 [SPEAKER_02]: So really starting to break down, and articulate what victims and survivors need, 69:16 [SPEAKER_02]: We have a massive gap in mental health support. 69:20 [SPEAKER_02]: We have too many psychologists and psychiatrists in therapists who are graduating without any trauma training of any real current. 69:28 [SPEAKER_02]: They're not being skilled in higher education in order to identify trauma, treat trauma, work well with trauma survivors. 69:36 [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's another real challenge for us there. 69:41 [SPEAKER_02]: And something where I think our collective voices 69:45 [SPEAKER_02]: So, I mean, in terms of sort of where I'm going in the future, I sort of work at the intersection of sort of victim support. 69:57 [SPEAKER_02]: So, we've just finished a large research project, looking at women with complex trauma, women with severe trauma, dissociative disorders, what do they need from 70:10 [SPEAKER_02]: from health, from welfare, from child protection, from housing services and from police. 70:15 [SPEAKER_02]: So really trying to look really holistically at the whole person and how we can support them to live a good life in the aftermath of severe abuse. 70:26 [SPEAKER_02]: Working with an Australian government agency here called the Australian Center to counter child exploitation. 70:34 [SPEAKER_02]: We're just finishing a study looking at the role of the role of parents in producing child sexual abuse material. 70:42 [SPEAKER_02]: So we know that a lot of child pornography is actually produced inside the family. 70:47 [SPEAKER_02]: That's really difficult for us to detect. 70:50 [SPEAKER_02]: It's really hard to detect family-based abuse and I think it's really imperative that governments stop shying away from this issue. 70:57 [SPEAKER_02]: We've known this for a long time. 70:59 [SPEAKER_02]: It's quite easy for governments to focus on abuse outside the family and we've made a lot of gains there around clergy abuse external perpetration. 71:09 [SPEAKER_02]: Those are really serious issues. 71:11 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to take away from that. 71:13 [SPEAKER_02]: And unfortunately, family-based abuse because it is quite difficult for the state intervene and I think it's just been kicked down the road for too long. 71:23 [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm doing some work there. 71:25 [SPEAKER_02]: And really going forward, really trying to take this victim agenda forward. 71:32 [SPEAKER_02]: How can we support victims? 71:34 [SPEAKER_02]: But also what can we learn from victims on the ground? 71:38 [SPEAKER_02]: How can we get state agencies police to take seriously and accept the kind of intelligence that victims have to offer us? 71:47 [SPEAKER_02]: We can learn a lot from listening to victims. 71:53 [SPEAKER_02]: those industries, those sectors that are part of the problem. 72:01 [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, unfortunately, you know, the internet has done wonderful things. 72:06 [SPEAKER_02]: It's enabled people like us to come together. 72:09 [SPEAKER_02]: It's enabled your community of listeners to come together, which is amazing. 72:14 [SPEAKER_02]: But unfortunately, you know, it's also proven to be the most effective distribution network 72:22 [SPEAKER_02]: And we really need to call out the tech industry so that the internet, we maximise its power for good and we make the internet and the online environment as hostile as possible for perpetrators of child's abuse. 72:57 [UNKNOWN]: Thank you very much.
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