Former Scout leader James Morris sexually abused children for 40 years

The former Scout leader James Morris has caused untold damage to the children he sexually abused over a period of 40 years.

Morris, also known as Ian Charles Phipps, is now waiting to receive his fourth jail sentence and this time it could be forever.

Stuff can now reveal that Morris has a string of convictions for child sexual abuse and was sentenced to preventive detention in 1997.

Published in Stuff

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Peer Support in Mental Health: Literature Review

Background: A growing gap has emerged between people with mental illness and health care professionals, which in recent years has been successfully closed through the adoption of peer support services (PSSs). Peer support in mental health has been variously defined in the literature and is simply known as the help and support that people with lived experience of mental illness or a learning disability can give to one another. Although PSSs date back to several centuries, it is only in the last few decades that these services have formally evolved, grown, and become an integral part of the health care system. Debates around peer support in mental health have been raised frequently in the literature. Although many authors have emphasized the utmost importance of incorporating peer support into the health care system to instill hope; to improve engagement, quality of life, self-confidence, and integrity; and to reduce the burden on the health care system, other studies suggest that there are neutral effects from integrating PSSs into health care systems, with a probable waste of resources.

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By Reham A Hameed Shalaby*, MD; Vincent I O Agyapong*, MD, PhD
May 2020

The lasting toxic effects of former Catholic Marist brother Kevin Healy

A Catholic Marist Brother told a girl he sexually assaulted to push rotten tomatoes into her face because she was so “ugly”.

The victim no longer lives in New Zealand, but the toxic memories of Kevin Healy’s offending are a constant reminder of betrayal, fear and anger.

The 81 year old, previously known as ”Brother Gordon”, was sentenced to nine months of home detention when he appeared in the Napier District Court on June 5, after pleading guilty to four charges of indecency between a man and boys aged 12 and 13, and one of indecency with a girl aged under 12.

The offending occurred between 1976 and 1977 when Healy was a member of the Marist Brothers and an active school teacher in Wairarapa.

Published in Stuff

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Intentional Peer Support Newsletter June 2020

IPS Statement of Support

Intentional Peer Support stands with all marginalized peoples, especially those of color experiencing harm at the hands of police and those with system and institutional power. We stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow organizations who condemn and are outspoken in their fight against white supremacy in the U.S. and throughout the world.  This disregard of basic human rights is ubiquitous, malicious, and must be challenged at every turn.  The death of George Floyd – at the hands of police – is yet another graphic reminder of the systemic racism and violence that is increasingly pervasive and incompatible with basic human rights and the values we uphold.

Published in Intentional Peer Support

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A role for lived experience mental health leadership in the age of Covid-19

In 2020 an invisible assassin has swept across the world, creating chaos, confusion and uncertainty. Covid 19 has taken many people’s health, some people’s lives and the lives of loved ones. It has destroyed livelihoods and put the financial futures of billions at risk. We are helpless, there is nothing to fight back with. We are trapped, we have to stay in our homes. We are physically isolated, our usual freedoms and way of life suspended…

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By Louise Byrne & Til Wykes
23 May 2020

Coming back from the brink

Isolated, lacking support and not able to see his children Ryan* didn’t know where to turn.

Suicidal thoughts had started to creep in with isolation compounding the issue.

Family members encouraged him to reach out for help and gave him the number of a free counselling service provided by Male Support Services Waikato during lockdown.

Published in Sun Live

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‘You grow up hating yourself’: why child abuse survivors keep – and break – their silence

Earlier this year Erin Delaney revealed on Facebook a secret she’d kept from almost everyone.

As a child she suffered physical and emotional abuse and severe neglect. The neglect had significant consequences, including a fractured skull from falling – which was only picked up when, after she vomited at school the next day, a member of her extended family intervened and took her to hospital.

Published in The Guardian

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Catholic Church’s legal deluge compounded by damning Pell findings

The Catholic Church is facing hundreds of civil claims by victims of clerical sex abuse, bolstered by the royal commission’s findings about Cardinal George Pell’s role in the “catastrophic failure of leadership” in the Ballarat diocese.

The royal commission’s finding that Cardinal Pell knew nearly 40 years ago of the church’s practice of shifting notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale to different parishes to avoid scandal is likely to bolster the cases of abuse survivors who must demonstrate a breach of duty of care to successfully sue the church.

Published in Sydney Morning Herald

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The hidden findings on George Pell are now clear: he could have protected children from abuse. He didn’t

This is the portrait of a deceitful man. We have waited over two and a half years but now we can read the unflinching verdict reached by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Cardinal George Pell.

With its last findings made public, it’s clear that no senior figure in any church who gave evidence to the commission has emerged as damaged as Pell.

Published in The Guardian

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History will not be kind to George Pell, as royal commission reveals its secret findings

For more than 1,400 days, they waited.

Little kids but now grown up, the childhoods they’d left behind stained by trauma. They waited to discover what a Prince of the Church knew.

From those four days in 2016 when George Pell gave evidence from Rome via video link because his Vatican doctor declared him unable to fly to Australia; through the rest of the royal commission; through his trials, his appeals, and through a final month of delay.

Published in ABC News

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Looking after mental health and wellbeing during Covid-19 resource (PDF)

If you’re a manager or workplace leader you can have a direct impact on the welfare and wellbeing of your employees.

The latest resource from the Mental Health Foundation will help workplace leaders to create work environments where people feel safe, calm, connected and hopeful throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Download Workplace Guide (PDF)

By Mental Health Foundation
Published in Mental Health Foundation website
19 March 2020

Shamed into silence: The hidden victims of male ‘honour’ abuse – BBC Newsnight

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Most people have heard about “honour abuse” of women but men can be hidden victims too. Coming from conservative religious communities, they can find themselves having to hide anything from sexual abuse to domestic violence to their being gay, because to speak out could dishonour their families. Newsnight’s Katie Razzall has been speaking to men trapped in this predicament. If you need support with forced marriage or honour violence, help and support is available bbc.co.uk/actionline

By BBC Newsnight
11 April 2020

Labor urges early payments for sick, elderly survivors of child sex abuse

Labor fears some of the thousands of survivors of child sexual abuse with unresolved redress claims could die before they are compensated under the $3.8 billion scheme and has urged the federal government to make early payments to sick and elderly survivors.

The opposition has also called on the government to name and shame institutions that fail to join the voluntary scheme before its June 30 sign up deadline as more than 500 applications for compensation remain on hold because the survivor’s institution is yet to sign up.

Published in Sydney Morning Herald

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Coronavirus: Free phone counselling for lockdown relationship issues

The Male Room usually offers people a place to go, get some kai, and talk to someone face-to-face.

Under the lockdown rules a lot of that has changed, but director and founder Philip Chapman said the korero was keeping on over the phone or skype.

He said the Male Room had applied for and been granted a Government fund which would be used to help pay for three counsellors who would be able to talk to anyone who was struggling with the lockdown.

He said the Police were now dealing with more call-outs for minor domestic disputes, and the counselling service would hopefully help reduce the stress people were dealing with.

Published in Stuff

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Police investigating George Pell over fresh child sexual abuse allegation – report

Cardinal George Pell is being investigated by police over a new allegation of child sexual abuse, according to News Corp reports.

Pell was released from jail last Tuesday after the high court acquitted him on five historical child sexual abuse charges. Pell, 78, spent more than 400 days in jail after being convicted by a jury in December 2018. The high court acquitted Pell after finding the jury should have held a reasonable doubt as to his guilt.

Published in The Guardian

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How George Pell won in the High Court on a legal technicality

The High Court today granted Cardinal George Pell special leave to appeal, and unanimously allowed the appeal. In other words, Pell won. His convictions were quashed and he will be released from prison.

Pell’s prosecution has been socially explosive and legally complex. The cardinal’s convictions by unanimous jury verdicts were a landmark event in Australian history. The High Court’s decision will be, too – both for the legal world and for society more broadly.

Published in The Conversation

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Provision of peer support at the intersection of homelessness and problem substance use services: a systematic ‘state of the art’ review

Peer support refers to a process whereby individuals with lived experience of a particular phenomenonprovide support to others by explicitly drawing on theirpersonal experience. It has been adopted in a variety of service contexts including homelessness, substance use, mental and physical health.

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By Joanna Astrid Miler (PhD), Hannah Carver (PhD), Rebecca Foster (PhD) and Tessa Parkes (PhD)
Salvation Army Centre for Addiction Services and Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling.
March 2020

More accusers come forward against Pell

Two men have come forward publicly for the first time to accuse George Pell of sexually abusing them when they were young boys housed in a Catholic orphanage. In allegations to be detailed in the ABC’s Revelation program tonight, the men say Pell, then a priest in the diocese of Ballarat, indecently touched and groped them on multiple occasions in showers and swimming pools. Bernie (surname withheld) said he did not report the allegations for years as he feared he would not be believed. “Who’s gonna believe a little boy from a home against that conglomerate,” he said. “You know, against that bloody goliath?” Victoria Police contacted Bernie as part of a 2016 investigation of historical sexual abuse allegations against Pell that were subsequently withdrawn. Pell, who says he is innocent of all sexual abuse allegations, is currently in prison awaiting the outcome of an appeal to the high court.

Published in The Saturday Paper

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COVID-19: Information related to family, whanau and sexual violence (for information)

The New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse and Nga Wai a te Tui are partnering to bring together information related to COVID-19.

The New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse website is bringing together information related to family, whanau and sexual violence during COVID-19 at: nzfvc.org.nz/Covid-19

Nga Wai a te Tui Maori and Indigenous Research Centre is working to bring together information and resources for whanau, communities and kaupapa Maori services (coming soon).

For more information, please go to: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse

read more…

Coronavirus: Living homeless under the threat of pandemic

For most of the past 12 months, Mark Shannon has been sleeping rough in the streets around Nelson’s central city.

He says while coronavirus is a scary subject, it hasn’t made him change his day-to-day life.

“When you see the news of 300 dying in Italy in a day, it is concerning, or course it is.

Published in Stuff

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From the Chairman’s desk, March 2020

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Phillip Chapman, MSA Chair

“Don’t be afraid to take an unfamiliar path Sometimes they’re the ones that take you to the best places”
Unknown

Kia ora koutou.

AN ESSENTIAL SERVICE – NAVIGATING COVID-19

At this time of uncertainty, it is important to reflect on the roles that we all play in enabling and assuring the wellbeing of male survivors of sexual violence and to consider how we can continue this work in an operating environment that is increasingly threatened by the health risks associated with the COVID-19 virus.

While the challenge of finding new ways to provide support to our survivor-client communities may be daunting, I am encouraged in the belief that this enquiry is likely to result in longer term benefits. I believe we are likely to discover and enable new ways of supporting our clients that may become future ‘business as usual’ – travelling “unfamiliar paths to find better places” so to speak.

I am reminded about the essential nature of the work we do by a quote from our recently published Peer Support brochure…

“We are all social beings by nature – connectedness and community are necessary if not vital to our wellbeing. The very existence of positive social relationships can be a source of healing for many psychological wounds”

The potential for our peer support services to build and sustain these enabling social relationships is embraced by the following quotation from the same publication…

“There is a great deal of strength in knowing someone who has walked where you are walking and now has a life of their choosing”

And so, we know that the work we do must continue if we are to support our clients to cope with the additionally stressful challenges that COVID-19 will present to many of them.

As we all feel the expanding impacts of the spread of COVID-19 throughout our communities and begin to deal with the practical realities of self-isolation and physical-distancing, I am particularly concerned about the impacts of these necessary constraints on our male survivor community – including our peer workers, counsellors and social workers who support them.

The challenge we all face is how to sustain the social connections that we know are so critical to maintaining the capacity of many survivors to navigate their daily lives and keep ‘moving forward’ on their own recovery journeys.

The challenge for our peer-workers, counsellors and social workers is to find new ways of working that not only ensure their own wellbeing but also assure the health and safety of our survivor-clients. We are already implementing the more obvious solutions by enabling our people to work from home and establishing virtual service connections (email, text, chat, skype, zoom etc.) that avoid face to face and group meeting situations.

While this way of working responds to the need to contain COVID-19 and suppress community transmission it presents particular service challenges for our support centres:

  • Not all of our clients have easy access to the technologies (mobile phones, internet, computers etc.) that enable and support remote contact;
  • Physical (albeit distanced) contact will remain an important mode of social connection for many clients;
  • Many of our clients will be additionally stressed by COVID-19 impacts with the likelihood that they will need additional support;
  • The availability and capacity of our employees, volunteers and contractors to provide support is also likely to be affected by the impacts of COVID-19; and
  • Not all of our service centres and/or our people may be appropriately equipped to support a virtual service environment.

This situation has become more challenging as we move to level four containment where most people are required to remain at home. This is clearly the right decision and Jacinda Adern and her team should be congratulated for their exemplary leadership at this is challenging time. However, this measure will inevitably cause significant economic and social disruption for many people and particularly for the communities that we serve on a daily basis.

I appreciate that there is no obvious ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for our support centres who all face their own resource constraints and deal with client communities that have different demographics and different service support requirements. However, I remain optimistic and confident that given our past record of overcoming challenges in our 20-year quest to support male survivors we will ‘find a way’ to successfully navigate the current situation.

I can only encourage us all to keep our shared purpose in the forefront – enabling the wellbeing of male survivors – as we try to develop solutions that are relevant for our own situations and to share new ways of working with our clients and with each other. I encourage you to engage with your trustees, funders and service providers who also have a part to play in finding ways to activate and support the solutions you develop. And to collaborate with other organisations that work in the sexual violence sector that are also challenged to provide ongoing service relevance and continuity.

As we consider our approach to navigating this time of uncertainty, we could use the following checklist as a guide:

✓ Conform strictly with official Government COVID-19 policies and guidelines as they apply to your people and client-services:

  • Workplace response to coronavirus (COVID-19) Government Employment Guide Covid-19
  • Ministry of Social Development Programs MSD Information on Covid-19

✓ Assure the primary safety and wellbeing of our people and our client communities:

  • Enable and support our people (peer workers, counsellors and social workers) to operate within a safe environment; support their wellbeing with appropriate care, supervision and co-reflection activities;
  • Enable and support our clients to access services in a way that assures their safety and promotes their wellbeing, remembering that our peer support principle of self- determination means that we can influence but not direct their decisions.

✓ Maintain, as far as practicable, the opportunities for social connections and social networking that sustain the wellbeing of our clients:

  • Ensure that our people have the technologies and tools they need to work remotely – in particular to deliver one-on-one support sessions and facilitate on-line group meetings;
  • Findwaystoensurethatourclientshaveaccesstothetoolsandtechnologiesthatwill enable them to participate in remote support services, for example access to mobile phones and plan top-ups, access to on line sessions etc.;

✓ Carefully transition our people and clients to new support services in a way that sustains their service relationships and social connections:

  • Whenever we shut a client service doorway, always open another services window, for example:
    • Replace cancelled peer support group meetings with options for remote one- on-one and/or on-line support groups;
    • Balance reduced opportunities for client drop-in access to personal services with increased access to ‘safe’ client service-centres (including access to necessary facilities, including technology).
  • Keep in mind the right of our clients to choose their own recovery pathway, but also remember our obligation to ensure that those choices do not put others at risk, for example:
    • In service situations where we can assure the safety of our own people but not our clients (e.g. clients decide to hold their own peer group meeting) we need to balance our obligations to advise our clients with their rights to make their own choices.

✓ Resource increased focus on maintaining client-service connections and follow-up activities:

  • Ensure that our people have adequate capacity (time and resources) to make sure that our clients know we are still available to support them… that we continue to care about their wellbeing:
    • Acknowledge that the required shift in service response will most likely require increased one-on-one and administrative time and resource this accordingly;
    • Set contact targets that are focused on not losing track of clients who may fall below the radar and recognise that this is a longer-term investment in client wellbeing and likely to impact the available contact time for current clients in the medium term.
  • Make sure that we listen to our clients and adapt our services to respond to their changing needs:
    • Increase the focus on client feedback; be aware of their changing circumstances; capture their response to service change; and always be prepared to adapt

✓ Prepare for increased support needs as the current situation prompts more people to seek our help:

  • Maintain service accessibility:
    • Ensure that our normal call facilities are available appropriately staffed; and
    • Think about those people who may not be able to easily access us and how we can be available to support them.
  • Plan for extra resource requirements – people, technology and client support funding

It is paramount that we remain ‘in contact’ with our survivor-clients and find ways to continue supporting them through this challenging and stressful time.

OUR NATIONAL AGENDA

While we are now operating in a rapidly changing and uncertain environment, the national organisation is continuing to forge ahead with the implementation of its longer-term strategic agenda. With the obvious caveat that our plan timeframes are subject to the unknown impacts of Covid-19, the following brief snapshot of our current focus and the status of our key initiatives will give you some assurance that, although constrained, the national body is very much alive and well.

Funding F2021- F2023

All MSA policies have now been approved as appropriate to support the MSD Level Two accreditation required for contracting funding for the next three fiscal years (2021-23). All existing member organisations should have been contacted by their regional MSD contract managers and should be in the process of achieving Level 2 accreditation.

MSA policies can be uplifted from the website or referenced as required. Where they require modification for local application, MS Word copies can be provided, except for national policies and guidelines that are not subject to modification – e.g. MSA peer support guidelines and standards.

The national Board would like to acknowledge our MSD support team, in particular Rick Manley and Waylon Edwards who have been most helpful in facilitating our funding allocations for the next three years and also sourcing additional funding for our Kia Mārire strategy.

Regional Development

We are on track to complete the implementation of our national network of service centres with plans to establish new member organisations in the following regions:

  • Tai Tokerau: We have completed our initial consultation with 12 Northland based organisations and are currently working to establish a service centre in Kerikeri. We have identified suitable premises and are currently recruiting trustees and staff with a view to being established by June 2020 with and official launch planned for August- September;
  • Taranaki: We are seeking to establish a service centre in New Plymouth. We have recruited a Manager for the centre and are currently interviewing trustees and we plan to have with similar opening and launch dates as for Tai Tokerau;
  • Hawkes Bay & Gisborne: We are currently exploring partnering opportunities to establish a service centre in Hawkes Bay.

We also expect to begin planning for our expansion within Auckland in July. This will be a collaborative planning exercise involving appropriate people from MSD, Better Blokes and MSA and will result in a funded strategy to extend our services reach across the Auckland region.

Kia Mārire – Effectiveness with Māori

We are awaiting final confirmation of the funding allocated to this national strategy to begin the recruitment of our Pouārahi Māori. With our Rōpu Tautoko1 (an advisory committee to the MSA Board) already in place we are hopeful that this strategy can be launched to enable and support our entry in Tai Tokerau.

Committee for Survivors

The national trustees have decided that the composition of this important Board Committee is most appropriately made up of the Managers of all of our Member Organisations – in effect our service delivery leadership team. The committee is now formed and details can be found on the national website – [MSA Committee for Survivors]. We are hopeful that this committee will have its inaugural meeting in May.

National Training Program

We were privileged to welcome Shery Mead and her partner to join the 12 participants our advanced IPS training program which was held in Nelson in February.

Shery is the person who developed IPS, a program she has been championing internationally for many years.

We are planning another introductory course in July for which we already have 12 participants. Please contact us if you have appropriate people for registration. And we are continuing to work with Better Blokes exploring the possibilities for a national peer group facilitation training program.

National Communications

We are very proud of the two new additions to our national publications – our Peer Support booklet and our Charter of Client Rights. Both publications are primarily focused on a male survivor audience but the peer support booklet is also a useful marketing tool to promote and explain peer support to other people.

The first version of the peer support booklet has been distributed free of charge to all membership organisations and will soon be reprinted with a Te Reo translation. The Charter, which will also be distributed free of charge will be available in April and will include a Te Reo translation.

We will also be updating the posters we distributed recently to include a Māori survivor image and to make these posters available in an A4 size.

National Research

We are making slower than expected progress with our national research project. So far, we only have 50 of the required 100 participants. If you know of survivors who would be prepared to contribute by completing a questionnaire and potentially participating in a focus group, please contact your local service manager or email me directly [pchapman@ts.co.nz].

National Quality Assurance

The Covid-19 virus will interrupt our national quality assurance review of peer-worker supervision, which is now unlikely to be completed until the fourth quarter of this calendar year. Mike Cagney (National Trustee), who has recently completed his review with Better Blokes (Auckland) confirms that the exercise is proving useful both in terms of quality assuring the policy, but also as an education exercise for membership governance and management teams as well as the peer workers involved.

OTHER EVENTS

Congratulations to the MOSAIC team on the staging of a very successful symposium on “Male Trauma and Sexual Abuse Recovery”. It was not only a very instructive event for all participants, but it also provided an important inter-services networking opportunity and a useful platform for encouraging inter-disciplinary dialogue.

The symposium was an initiative of Richard Jeffery (MOSAIC) (left), lead facilitated the well- known trauma specialist Rick Goodwin (right) with MSA represented by the ‘boxer’ in the middle – Ken Clearwater (National Advocate)

Dealing with male trauma generally is becoming an increasingly important aspect of our national services agenda and one that we intend to focus more on in the future. And we look forward to opportunities for MSA to co-host more national educational events that inform, and thus enable, our people and our collaborators to improve the services we can offer to our male survivor community across Aotearoa

On behalf of my fellow trustees, Noho ora mai

Philip Chapman
Chair

Ngā mihi o te wā me te Tau Hou

Please look after yourself, your teams, your family and friends and our survivors

March 2020

Footnotes

  1. 1 The Ropu Tautoko members are: Ta Mark Solomon, Shane Graham, Dr. Oliver Sutherland, Dr. Lorraine Eade, Inspector Dexter Traill,

ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson on making Revelation and coming face to face with two of the Catholic Church’s worst serial paedophiles

Sarah Ferguson spends her working life wading through murky waters, tackling difficult, confronting and harrowing stories but none has tested her like the project that consumed her for the past year: Revelation — a three-part documentary investigation into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, in which she comes face to face with two of Australia’s most notorious serial paedophiles.

Published in ABC News

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Pell’s last stand

Next Wednesday and Thursday, the last two days of the year that’s passed since George Pell was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, are also the former archbishop’s last real chance of being cleared of child sexual abuse. On 11 March, Pell’s barrister, Bret Walker, will try to convince the High Court of Australia to overturn twin rulings against his client by a unanimous Victorian jury and a divided Victorian court. Victoria’s director of public prosecutions, Kerri Judd, may well spend 12 March imploring the nation’s top judges to leave the nation’s top Catholic behind bars for at least thirty-two more months.

Published in Inside Story

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Bristlecone Project

Men who were sexually abused or assaulted—whether as children or adults—may feel isolated and stigmatized by what happened to them. The truth is that millions of men from around the world have had these experiences. Below are stories from a dynamic community of male survivors.

View stories online at 1in6

By The Bristlecone Project
Published in 1in6
XX February 2020

New domestic violence stats show psychological abuse as common as physical

The ‘Offences by Family Members’ report was released today as part of the wider ‘2018 New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey’, with the findings likely to influence future funding for support services.

The survey, which involved interviewing 8000 New Zealanders about their experience of crime, provides an accurate, up-to-date picture of New Zealand’s domestic violence issue, according to Ministry of Justice’s manager of research and evaluation James Swindells.

Published in TVNZ 1 News

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