As adults we make our kids carry the burden of child sexual abuse when we tell ourselves that our ‘hands are tied’ or that we are otherwise powerless to stop the abuse. We are only too ready to make excuses for ourselves leaving kids alone to face these monsters.

Child sexual abuse causes societal harm.- few would disagree. The child victims carry lifelong scars, but also their families, Society as a whole is harmed more generally but no less profoundly. The question we explore in this post is who is best-placed to carry this burden. Is it adults or children?

The Commission of Inquiry showed us that in Tasmania it is our children who have shouldered the burden historically. Adults have prioritised their interests over those of children.

The adult concerns of social standing, protecting the reputations of individuals and institutions, maintaining the prestige of professions, observing professional and legal demarcations, and securing business and personal interests have consistently prevailed. Government officials say things like they don’t have the legal or jurisdictional remit to act decisively- their hands are often tied they say. We are told that privacy laws stop Government Agencies from sharing information that could be used to identify and stop child sex offenders. Police say that their manuals and policies prevent them from investigating allegations. Politicians seem to be saying that the laws they make do a good enough job in the belief that child sexual abuse is in fact impossible to stop- there will always be victims!. The actions of many politicians tells us that they believe child abuse is something to be politicised for electoral gain, not a moral challenge for us to collectively overcome in the interests of our children.

Kids are in no way resourced to deal with the shame and the psychological trauma, and yet Tasmanians continue to prefer ‘adult concerns’ over the imperative of caring for our children. This means our children carry the burden into later life, often pressed to remain silent so as to preserve the interests of adults and institutions.

This moral cowardice and the raw self-interest is appalling!

Recent reports in the Launceston Examiner revealing that the Principal of a local Private School failed to report an incidence of grooming illustrates that the new legislation is not working. This is particularly troubling given that the Tasmanian Department of Education erroneously advised the School that the sexual grooming of students was not reportable conduct under the new legislation. This is astonishing given the millions of dollars spent on the saturation training of Schools in their obligations under the new Child and Youth Safe legislation. We need to acknowledge that Business as Usual = Abuse as Usual and there can be no excuses, post the Commission of Inquiry. Behaviour is a function of consequence and while there are no sanctions applied to those breaching the law the calculus of decision-making in institutions remains in favour of cover-ups.

The proportion of child sex offenders who will see a court room is miniscule. There are so many barriers that impede those seeking justice for victims. Tasmanian Government Agencies like Tasmania Police are now actively using legal and jurisdictional arguments designed to sidestep their mandatory reporting obligations under the new Child and Youth Safe Act and negate the scrutiny of the Independent Regulator. This ABC article revealed that Tasmania Police stopped reporting officers subject to Child Sexual Abuse allegations in August 2025.

As such it is natural that those harmed feel frustrated, and at times might consider extra-judicial steps, but vigilantism is never the answer. However community frustration needs to be acknowledged. with the ongoing failures in Government Agencies and other institutions. Our passion is best directed at joint efforts to prevent the abuse of our kids and this requires that we have a cool-headed understanding of what’s actually occurring.

International studies show that between 1 and 4% of men have the proclivities that see them entertaining the idea of seeking sexual gratification with minors. Some women also have these inclinations. These statistics tell us that there is a sizeable proportion of our community that constitute a risk to children. Importantly a child can never consent to sex, and almost universally the act is accompanied by threats or actual violence. It is the fear along with the actual abuse that causes harm to children and the harm is amplified when adults choose to disbelieve them!

Let’s be clear, child sexual abuse causes lifelong harm to kids. There are those who seek to trivialise the harms but the evidence shows that child sexual abuse in any form has a life-changing effect on children.

As a community we know intuitively that child sexual abuse will continue to happen unabated while Government Agencies and other institutions are not compelled to meet their duty of care to children.

Key Takeaways

1. The new Tasmanian CYSOF legislation is proving to be practically unenforceable.
2. The community looks to the Joint Parliamentary Committee scrutinising the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry to report on why the CYSOF Act is effectively unenforceable.
3. The Joint Parliamentary Committee must as a matter of utmost urgency identify the legislative and operational changes needed to allow the Independent Regulator to ‘regulate’ Government Agencies including Tasmania Police.