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‘The silent epidemic’: Lifting the taboo on child sexual abuse

Wednesday, 3 April 2024

Detective Inspector Scott Beard talks to Stuff about child sexual abuse.

At an age where they should be playing with Barbie dolls and teddy bears, children are being sexually abused. Katie Ham reports on why it’s time to lift the taboo on child sexual abuse in Aotearoa. This is part two of a two-part series.

Warning: This story contains details of child sexual abuse

“For the first 16 years of my life, I was sexually abused and trafficked by my father, to gangs and other groups of men here in New Zealand,” Gloria Masters recalls.

Now in her 50s, Masters is a child sexual abuse advocate on a mission to keep kids safe.

‘It’s time now for us to come out of the shadows’

“As survivors, we’ve been kept in the shadows for too long - but I think it’s time now for us to come out,” Masters told Stuff.

Masters is the author of a self-published memoir, On Angels’ Wings, in which she alleges a horrific childhood in suburban Auckland in the 1960s, featuring sadistic sexual abuse, suffered at the hands of a father she calls only The Monster.

More recently, however, she’s turned her attention to providing children across the motu with the tools to claw themselves out of the kinds of abuse she endured during her childhood.

Masters alleges that, from the age of three until she was 16, her paedophile father orchestrated almost continual sexual abuse, perpetrated both by him and others.

Statistics show more than half of the sexual abuse reported in Aotearoa is committed against people under 18-years-old - but what’s being done to prevent that?
Statistics show more than half of the sexual abuse reported in Aotearoa is committed against people under 18-years-old - but what’s being done to prevent that?

Nobody was ever prosecuted for Masters’ abuse.

“One of the very sad things is that people knew but turned away, which leads me into now and what I think one of New Zealand’s biggest problems is - it’s the cognitive dissonance surrounding child sexual abuse.

“People turn away, rather than lean in, because it’s so uncomfortable to talk about,” Masters says.

Author Gloria Masters details horrific child abuse in her new book, On Angels' Wings

More than half of the sexual abuse reported to police in New Zealand is committed against people under 18-years-old, according to data collected by the Ministry of Justice.

“So my challenge to New Zealand is - where’s the noise?”

‘Sexual groomers are among us’

Julia* provides a unique perspective on child sexual abuse in New Zealand - her daughter was sexually abused by a man she, Julia, was in a relationship with.

He’d been in the family’s life for a number of years and owned a business with Julia, but it was only in the last year that the abuse began, Julia told Stuff.

“I didn’t see it because he earned my trust and was highly manipulative,” Julia recalls.

If there is one lesson she hopes people learn from her story, it’s that parents and carers look closely at the people they introduce into their children’s lives and remain vigilant to their behaviour - and changes in behaviour.

Statistics show that the vast majority of child sexual abuse perpetrators of children under 12 are known to them.
Statistics show that the vast majority of child sexual abuse perpetrators of children under 12 are known to them.

“These people will do everything they can to remove you from your child’s life. They need you to be busy somewhere else and they’re happy to help with the kids.

“But the important thing is - sexual groomers are among us, they look just like us. Sex offenders are highly opportunistic people and really, scarily normal, even nice.”

Eventually Julia’s daughter disclosed the abuse to a third party, and legal proceedings began. The man is currently serving a five-and-a-half year jail sentence.

“We had an amazing prosecution team who were dedicated and professional. But we were the privileged 1% who got all the way and got justice in the courts,” Julia reflects.

Research shows that one in three girls and one in six boys will experience an unwanted sexual advance by the time they turn 18.
Research shows that one in three girls and one in six boys will experience an unwanted sexual advance by the time they turn 18.

But Julia, like Masters, is conscious not just to look back, instead casting ahead to what can be done in Aotearoa to prevent child sexual abuse.

“My story falls into the wider context of something that’s fundamentally wrong with today’s society.”

‘The silent epidemic’

Masters presented at the international mental health conference in June last year, calling the secrecy around child sexual abuse ‘the silent epidemic’.

She’s now hoping to introduce a hand signal that’s taught to under 16s to use if they are being abused, trafficked - or are fearful of either of those things - in New Zealand.

The hand signal is similar to that that was circulated widely during the Covid-19 lockdowns and was designed to raise the alarm if someone felt unsafe at home, but this time is designed for “our beautiful tamariki and rangatahi so that they have a way to communicate”.

On the last page of Gloria Masters’ second book, Keeping Kids Safe, is a quote that she hopes can get New Zealand thinking.
On the last page of Gloria Masters’ second book, Keeping Kids Safe, is a quote that she hopes can get New Zealand thinking.

“Kids don’t always tell us when something’s wrong, often they show us through their behaviour. I’d be totally out of control at school because I was finally safe,” Masters says, when asked if she thinks a hand signal like this would have helped her.

“I'd love to see that global hand sign on billboards. I'd love to see it on our Harbour Bridge. I'd love to see it taught in schools. I'd love to see it talked about on a designated day every year.”

Masters has also started a charity dedicated to survivors, called Handing Back the Shame.

Julia wants child sexual abuse to be seen as a risk - just like blue baby syndrome, for example - that is raised by healthcare providers in an open discussion with all parents and carers.

“This is especially important for single mums, who are often the prime target for this kind of abuse because they’re time poor. Predators can use that.”

Aotearoa, she says, is particularly bad news averse.

“People here just want to talk about the upsides of life, not deal with problems. They avoid these kinds of high confrontational topics, which enables abusive behaviours to thrive. This problem isn’t going to go away without a pushback.”

Once the taboo on child sexual abuse in New Zealand is lifted, we can face the problem and start holding a coherent conversation about how to tackle it, she says.

“My key thing is that we need to normalise the conversation and create spaces where this topic can live comfortably. We don’t have that comfortable space today.”

Quite how this is done, Julia is still trying to work out.

Perhaps it could be built into parent education, such as antenatal courses for new parents or carers, or be discussed as a normal topic at a seminar like is held on childhood brain development, or even pamphlets in doctor surgeries with the key behavioural changes to look out for in children, she says.

“There seem to be two worlds – there’s currently a very small group of us who have been burned, and are now extremely clued up, but everybody else lives in the dark.

“It’s a case of ‘it’s not my problem’ until suddenly it is and it’s happened to you or someone in your world. It happens more often than anyone expects so we need to stop treating it like a surprise.”

* Not her real name. Survivors of sexual abuse in New Zealand are given automatic lifetime name suppression unless formally waived, as are any victims of a crime under 18. Stuff has given Julia a pseudonym to protect her daughter’s identity.

This is part two of a two-part series. You can read part one here.

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