Australia has led the world in developing and funding primary prevention models for violence against women. However, questions are now being raised about the effectiveness of these prevention models. Community surveys show that positive attitude change regarding sexual violence has only been gradual; in the area of family violence change positive attitude change has stalled, and even gone backwards. This presentation calls for an open conversation about what we should expect from prevention work, and how we can make it more focused, accountable and results-oriented in the short to long term. It draws parallels with other public health successes in Australia, which have been achieved through a flexible and adaptive approach to primary prevention. We argue that, for gender-based violence, primary prevention work has focused too narrowly on ‘gender inequality’ and has marginalised other key contributors and opportunities for intervention. Our paper argues that men’s violence is a biopsychosocial problem that requires coordinated, multi-tiered interventions that increase perpetrator accountability, provide early intervention into trauma, and address the material and commercial determinants of violence against women. Prevention should not be positioned as work that only applies where violence has not yet occurred. We argue for a move away from this traditional linear thinking to a systems-based approach; for see prevention work to evolved from being a siloed area of policy and practice to work that is embedded in every stage of the response system.

Australia has led the world in developing and funding primary prevention models for violence against women. However, questions are now being raised about the effectiveness of these prevention models. Community surveys show that positive attitude change regarding sexual violence has only been gradual; in the area of family violence change positive attitude change has stalled, and even gone backwards. This presentation calls for an open conversation about what we should expect from prevention work, and how we can make it more focused, accountable and results-oriented in the short to long term. It draws parallels with other public health successes in Australia, which have been achieved through a flexible and adaptive approach to primary prevention. We argue that, for gender-based violence, primary prevention work has focused too narrowly on ‘gender inequality’ and has marginalised other key contributors and opportunities for intervention. Our paper argues that men’s violence is a biopsychosocial problem that requires coordinated, multi-tiered interventions that increase perpetrator accountability, provide early intervention into trauma, and address the material and commercial determinants of violence against women. Prevention should not be positioned as work that only applies where violence has not yet occurred. We argue for a move away from this traditional linear thinking to a systems-based approach; for see prevention work to evolved from being a siloed area of policy and practice to work that is embedded in every stage of the response system.

In recent years, a spotlight has been shone on the oft overlapping issues of family, sexual and domestic violence. In that time, they have featured heavily in political and populist movements, for better and for worse.

One group that almost always loses out amongst the furore is children, whose experiences are frequently subordinated. It’s as though the moment we highlight a crime against our young ones, the microphone is snatched off them by nearby competitors who view the child’s voice as unable to hold its own. That and the ultimate crime against nature perhaps remains the last frontier of discomfort for many among us. The idea of a child misbehaving is more palatable than pure evil. Wherever we can whitewash history, we do.

Child abuse does not discriminate. Its victims and survivors are as diverse as humanity itself. There are certainly circumstances and predispositions that increase the risk of victimisation. We know that familial instability, poverty, race, disability, among others are factors.

Still, all children are vulnerable. All children are dependent on adults to provide basic needs and model behaviour. This is not merely a social or legal construct. This is a fact of evolutionary biology. Unlike adults, children are yet to finish their neurological, physical and social development.

This year’s Childhood Maltreatment study revealed that around 28.5% of the national population is sexually abused before age 18. On average, 1 in 5 is male, 1 in 3 is female. 67% of the survivors who contributed to The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released in 2017 were male. SAMSN, a not-for-profit organisation solely committed to helping raise awareness of and supporting male child sexual abuse victims, has been defunded.

Over the two and a half years since I was catapulted onto a platform from the obscurity of voluntary advocacy preceded by eight years of legally enforced silence, I have watched in bemusement—and at times alarm—as my image has been claimed without my permission by all manner of causes in the relentless contest of adult interests. The irony of this is self-evident and multifactorial.

Child safety is not a political movement. It’s not an ideology. It’s not a consumer product. Such is the effect of the monopolisation of trauma, tragedy and every other human experience that has been itemised by transnational tabloid and tech tycoons that we have apparently forgotten to look at each other through human eyes; through the unfiltered, uncorrupted lens of intergenerational trauma.

Trauma is stored in our cells. Our DNA is our codified genetic instruction manual. What happens to us in childhood sets the stage for the rest of our lives. If we wish to truly heal, reconnect and grow as individuals, groups and as a community we have to begin at the beginning. We have to begin in childhood. Children are our future.