A few years ago, I was speaking to group of about twenty Australians. We were deep in the heart of a state forest, surrounded by pine trees and listening to the sounds of the breeze rustling through the pine needles and the ever-present birds. I had just concluded a Dharma talk and people were raising questions and discussing what had been said in the talk. It was a safe environment, one in which everyone felt comfortable with one another as most were friends and the strangers had soon felt at ease.
One newcomer raised a question about parents and after my response he replied that he had been abused as a child. After he spoke, another person said she too had been abused. As each person spoke, it was gradually revealed that with the exception of two people, myself and a gentleman from the UK, every person had experienced some form of abuse, neglect, or abandonment as a child.
The gentleman spoke fondly of his mother and of the wonderful meals she had cooked for her children. I remembered forays into the woods like the one we were in with my father who taught me to identify various leaves and who had posted his property with “No hunting” signs. But apparently we were very much in the minority, the two people who had good childhoods. Eighteen others had experienced very different childhoods.
Amazing.
And terribly frightening. And sad.
Since that day, I have had several discussions with this gentleman about the high level of family abuse here. Was it because of the isolation of few people in a large country and the absence of a good support system? Was it related to alcohol and drug abuse? A failure of public education? Is it something built into the culture since the arrival of Europeans and even before as suggested by Carolyn Worth from the Victorian Centres Against Sexual Assault (CASA) Forum in an ABC interview?
On March 11th on the Herald Sun website is an article “More Victorian families taking children hunting.” There is a poll on the page with the question: Should children be encouraged to shoot animals? It’s a simple poll with only two choices: “Yes, it is character building” and “No, it's too brutal.” I checked the latter, clicked submit, and saw the current results.
And was horrified.
Out of a total of total of 15280 votes, 89% (13648 votes) said “Yes.” Only 10% (1632 votes) said “No.”
Almost ninety percent of responders thought it okay to encourage children to shoot animals, that it built character. As the person who emailed me about the poll said, this was probably not an accurate representation of Australians as a whole, but due somewhat to the newspaper’s demographics.
But whether the number is 90% or 50% or whatever, children as young as three years old were going out with their fathers and watching as animals were killed. One person interviewed for the article said “You do get a lot of kids out with their dads as it is a traditional family activity.”
A traditional family activity. That "builds character."
(Picture from the Herald Sun)