A report into child abuse in New Zealand has revealed the areas with the highest reported rates.
Child Poverty Action Group’s research, released at the organisation’s annual general meeting this evening, examined Child Youth and Family (CYF) data from 2008-2012.
Based on reporting of child abuse at CYF site offices, Papakura, Auckland, and Whakatane had the highest recorded rates.
The site office with the lowest rate was Wellington, found the report.
Papakura, with the highest rate of children as victims of substantiated claims of abuse, was 0.040%.
The Far North, with the tenth-highest proportion, had a rate slightly over half that, at 0.022%.
“The ten sites…show support for the proposition that child abuse is associated with deprivation,” said the report.
“Two areas with high rates of poverty – Whangarei and Far North – are at the bottom end of this group; while the presence of Taupo and Rotorua appears to reflect high rates of deprivation in surrounding rural areas.”
Westgate was the only site in Auckland in the top ten not in South Auckland.
Broken down into types of child abuse over the same time period, sexual abuse accounted for the smallest proportion, at 6.7% of cases.
Emotional abuse was the most common form, at 54.6% on average.
Sexual abuse and neglect was relatively constant during the period, but the number of emotional and physical abuse cases had risen.
CPAG said this could reflect an increase in the number of police and family violence referrals, or the impact of the Ministry of Social Development’s ‘It’s not OK’ campaign.
Though violent child abuse cases resulting in death attracted the most public attention, they accounted for a tiny fraction of child abuse cases, said the report.
Across the country, Maori children were abused at a rate far higher than expected, given their proportion in the population of children.
Raw data showed nationally Maori children were more than twice as likely to suffer abuse as Europeans.
The data pointed to the strong link between socioeconomic deprivation and ethnicity as an explanation.
In yesterday’s sudden eruption of violence scores of churches, Christian-owned businesses and homes came under attack in Egypt.
The violence was a reaction to the government’s crackdown on 2 camps in Cairo, established to call for the reinstatement of President Mohamed Morsi.
Media reports state that 27 church buildings and at least 30 Christian-owned homes were attacked in the violence unleashed by pro-Morsi supporters. The government, however, reported attacks on only 7 churches.
According to the Egyptian Health Ministry, 235 people were killed and more than 1000 injured in the clashes. However, estimates of the casualties vary widely with some reports even stating that the death toll could be around 1000.
Since President Morsi was ousted, extreme Islamists have targeted the country’s Christians, stating that they hold them partly responsible.
Only last week, a 10-year-old Christian girl was shot dead on the way home from her Bible class.
Prayer points:
Pray that there would be no more outbreaks of violence;
Pray for God’s protection over all Christians in Egypt;
Pray for God’s healing mercy upon all those injured in the attacks;
Pray that the LORD would comfort families mourning the loss of loved ones.
We Can Defend Our Liberties John Stonestreet, August 2, 2013
Karl Marx said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. And for once, I agree with him.
After World War II, our nation found itself in a dangerous Cold War with the Soviets. But while America eventually prevailed, not everything done in the name of freedom was kosher.
For a time, Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee wreaked havoc on free speech and destroyed a lot of reputations—remember the Hollywood Ten?
Modern liberals have made freedom of speech a cornerstone of their movement, and rightly so, ever since.
Tragically, the old impulse to control what people believe and say—or crush them politically—is still alive and well. But farcically, it is those who say they value tolerance over everything who are doing a lot of the persecuting.
Orson Scott Card, an award-winning writer of fantasy and science fiction, is their latest target. Card, a Mormon, has publicly stated that society should oppose gay marriage and even homosexual conduct—a pretty mainstream position just a few years ago.
Well, earlier this year, when he was selected to write for a new Superman comic series, homosexual activists tried to blacklist him—on National Public Radio, no less! Now Card’s science-fiction book, “Ender’s Game,” is being released as a major film this fall, and the thought police are at it again.
A gay activist group organized a boycott of “Ender’s Game,” even though all sides agree the movie has nothing to do with any social issue. The goal of these neo-McCarthy-ites is to punish Card, plain and simple, to make him unemployable, and to hurt any company that transgresses their definition of political correctness.
Surprisingly enough, The New York Times is calling them on it. The Times says that the boycott is really “closer to blacklisting,” adding, “This isn’t about stopping the dissemination of antigay sentiments; it’s about isolating Mr. Card and shaming his business partners, thus cutting into their profits. If Mr. Card belongs in quarantine, who’s next?”
Good question, New York Times.
Well, who’s next was my friend and Summit Ministries colleague, Mike Adams. A popular professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Mike writes extensively and powerfully about speech codes on college campuses. Mike has more than 5,000 Facebook friends. Facebook ought to be sending him flowers and a card every week, because followings like his keep their social media platform in business.
But recently, Mike offered an argument against same-sex “marriage.” It was not angry or sarcastic, but some folks complained. So Mike was informed by Facebook that his account had been suspended for twelve hours for “violating community standards.”
Well shockingly, there are a few Facebook pages still live and active entitled “Kill George Zimmerman.” These are some community standards!
And earlier this month, Facebook blocked fans of Christian actor Kirk Cameron from posting comments about his upcoming movie, “Unstoppable.” Incredibly, Facebook deemed the content of the website “abusive and unsafe.”
Cameron didn’t take this lying down—and neither should we. The actor informed more than half a million of his Facebook fans and received more than 24,000 “likes” and 5,000 comments in about an hour. Facebook rescinded the ban, and eventually stated that they had made a technical mistake. Well, take that for what you will, but at the very least, the flood of comments no doubt helped them discover the “mistake.” “This is a real victory,”
Cameron said. “If we work together, we do have a voice.”
Friends, as you can see, the pressure on free speech is building. But as you can also see, if we stand up for our rights, we can preserve them. However, the old maxim, “use it or lose it,” applies. Let’s stand for our right to free speech and freedom of religion and do so calmly, winsomely, persistently, and—when appropriate—humorously. After all, attacks on free speech are no laughing matter, but they can certainly seem rather farcical!
Next Steps
As John has pointed out, each and every one of us must do our part to keep free speech free. First, stay vigilant. If you become aware of someone being blacklisted or harassed because their view is politically incorrect, speak out using your social networks.
Second, share this commentary on Facebook or Twitter with others. It will take considerable effort from everyone to halt today’s attack on free speech; and it can be done.
Gather more information on Daily BreakPoint by visiting www.breakpoint.org
I think it’s so easy to go through married life, taking each other for granted. Andy and I spoke with a dear friend recently who lost his wife a few years ago. He was musing about how he would love her so differently, if he could. Listening to him I want to learn from his loss, and not miss out on the lesson in my own marriage.
Here’s some of what he shared:
He said, “I think back on all the emotion and time we both wasted having conflict over things that are meaningless. I would get “angry” with her and whine when she’d lock her keys in the car for the umpteenth time. Now I see that instead of an annoying waste of time, it was an opportunity to serve her and show her how much I loved her.
Dozens of stupid conflicts . . . when she’d dry a piece of clothing I told her not to, and now it fits my son instead of me. Big deal. Leaving the gas tank empty. Big deal. She’d occasionally leave the oven on all night. Big deal. I’d get mad at her over . . . nothing!
Almost all our conflicts (like leaving the lights on, missing the rubbish truck, leaving the gas tank empty) were almost always rooted in hurting my pride, making things harder for me, wasting my time. Ya, right, like how much time am I getting with her now?
Seriously, giving time and energy to all that kind of pettiness was just a freaking waste. I’d give anything to have those times back and just love her instead.
Secondly, I would concentrate on not taking her for granted. I would try to recognize as many of the “normal” things she did for me, acknowledge them, thank her for them, reward her more often for them. I’d end every phone call, email and text with “Love you” and mean it.
On the same line, I wouldn’t take life so much for granted either. We just don’t know how much time our wife has, ourchildren have, we have. I wouldn’t postpone special times, trips etc. because it was an inconvenient time, or would stretch me financially. I’d make a marriage and family “bucket list” and pursue it with Kathy whole heartedly. Sadly, I have time now, money now, but not Kathy.
Now that I’ve actually written this down and not just mused about them, I’m dreadfully saddened. I was such a fool.”
Wow. Amazing insights. Precious words. And a great lesson for us all to heed.
As for me, I’m going to try and lift my “love game”.
What about you?
Oh….one more thing….please pray for our friend Bob as he continues to do life without his precious Kathy.
By DAVID BROOKS Published: July 8, 2013 on NYTimes.com
I might as well tell you upfront that this column is a book report. Since 2007, when it was published, academics have been raving to me about Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age.” Courses, conferences and symposia have been organized around it, but it is almost invisible outside the academic world because the text is nearly 800 pages of dense, jargon-filled prose.
As someone who tries to report on the world of ideas, I’m going to try to summarize Taylor’s description of what it feels like to live in an age like ours, without, I hope, totally butchering it.
Taylor’s investigation begins with this question: “Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say 1500, in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy but even inescapable?” That is, how did we move from the all encompassing sacred cosmos, to our current world in which faith is a choice, in which some people believe, others don’t and a lot are in the middle?
This story is usually told as a subtraction story. Science came into the picture, exposed the world for the way it really is and people started shedding the illusions of faith. Religious spirit gave way to scientific fact.
Taylor rejects this story. He sees secularization as, by and large, a mottled accomplishment, for both science and faith.
Advances in human understanding — not only in science but also in art, literature, manners, philosophy and, yes, theology and religious practice — give us a richer understanding of our natures. Shakespeare helped us see character in more intricate ways. An improvement in mores means we take less pleasure from bear-baiting, hanging and other forms of public cruelty. We have a greater understanding of how nature works.
These achievements did make it possible to construct a purely humanistic account of the meaningful life. It became possible for people to conceive of meaningful lives in God-free ways — as painters in the service of art, as scientists in the service of knowledge.
But, Taylor continues, these achievements also led to more morally demanding lives for everybody, believer and nonbeliever. Instead of just fitting docilely into a place in the cosmos, the good person in secular society is called upon to construct a life in the universe. She’s called on to exercise all her strength.
People are called to greater activism, to engage in more reform. Religious faith or nonfaith becomes more a matter of personal choice as part of a quest for personal development.
This shift in consciousness leads to some serious downsides. When faith is a matter of personal choice, even believers experience much more doubt. As James K.A. Smith of Comment Magazine, who was generous enough to share his superb manuscript of a book on Taylor, put it, “We don’t believe instead of doubting; we believe while doubting. We’re all Thomas now.”
Individuals don’t live embedded in tight social orders; they live in buffered worlds of private choices. Common action, Taylor writes, gives way to mutual display. Many people suffer from a malaise. They remember that many people used to feel connected to an enchanted, transcendent order, but they feel trapped in a flat landscape, with diminished dignity: Is this all there is?
But these downsides are more than made up for by the upsides. Taylor can be extremely critical of our society, but he is grateful and upbeat. We are not moving to a spiritually dead wasteland as, say, the fundamentalists imagine. Most people, he observes, are incapable of being indifferent to the transcendent realm. “The yearning for eternity is not the trivial and childish thing it is painted as,” Taylor writes.
People are now able to pursue fullness in an amazing diversity of different ways. But Taylor observes a general pattern. They tend not to want to live in a world closed off from the transcendent, reliant exclusively on the material world. We are not, Taylor suggests, sliding toward pure materialism.
We are, instead, moving toward what he calls a galloping spiritual pluralism. People in search of fullness are able to harvest the intellectual, cultural and spiritual gains of the past 500 years. Poetry and music can alert people to the realms beyond the ordinary.
Orthodox believers now live with a different tension: how to combine the masterpieces of humanism with the central mysteries of their own faiths. This pluralism can produce fragmentations and shallow options, and Taylor can eviscerate them, but, over all, this secular age beats the conformity and stultification of the age of fundamentalism, and it allows for magnificent spiritual achievement.
I’m vastly oversimplifying a rich, complex book, but what I most appreciate is his vision of a “secular” future that is both open and also contains at least pockets of spiritual rigor, and that is propelled by religious motivation, a strong and enduring piece of our nature.
The New Zealand Herald has recently highlighted the on-going debate about religious instruction in classes. Specifically, Bible in Schools.
Nicholas Jones, NZ Herald journalist, states that, “One in three state primary and intermediate schools teaches religious instruction, according to a survey which has triggered a debate over what children are being taught – and the value of it.
The survey, sent to more than 1800 schools, reveals 578 have religious instruction classes.
Of these, 56 say they do not know the content of those lessons.”
Please read his stories here and participate on survey if it is still active:
Following are some of the reader’s views submitted to the NZ Herald website:
• Richard Clark: “Religion is a personal choice – it has no place in state-funded schools. Simple really.”
• Christine Richardson: “While some kids already will get some of this education at home, some kids aren’t and this is a positive input into their lives and can only be a good thing.”
• Brian Lehtonen: “Children do not need supernatural instruction in school. The values that the church sees as their own are not. These are universal human values. The world needs more adults who do not indulge in make-believe.”
• Stefan Nogaj: “The content being taught is always positive and if anything instils beneficial life skills. And remember, the mention of God is in our national anthem so naturally children have the right to understand the context of God’s inclusion.”
• Andrew Robson: “The issue as I see it is they teach the Bible as fact. This leads to major confusion when my kids get home and I try and tell them that the Bible is a story that some people believe and some don’t. If they are going to teach Bible in class they should teach it hand in hand with evolution and Darwin’s theory.”
