Surviving her son's false rape ordeal

Bettina Arndt

Are more women falsely accusing men of rape or simply being caught out making these allegations? Maybe we are now just seeing more journalists reporting these cases instead of pretending they never happen.

Whatever the reason I’m now finding myself posting comments on a steady stream of such cases, including some, like Sara Jane Parkinson whose story I broke in January, where women have been sent to prison. That’s rare, of course. More often than not these women get off scot-free, even when their lies have sent men to prison, destroyed families and cost fortunes in legal fees for the wrongly accused.

I seem to be talking every few weeks to men in this circumstance. Not only the men but their mothers. It is particularly distressing talking to weeping women who are always amazed that our legal system is now so intent on denying their sons’ proper justice.

My new video features one such mother. She’s one of the rare lucky ones. Her 18-year-old son was recently found not guilty after a long rape trial where, amazingly, the jury stood and applauded the newly acquitted young man when he left the courthouse. It seems the jurists were left in no doubt about his innocence after his accuser’s extraordinary court appearances which left her web of lies in tatters. The 12,000 messages from her phone showed she was prone to juggling multiple partners at any one time and DNA evidence revealed sperm deposits from two other men in her vagina on the night in question, but none from the accused.

The family is trying to persuade the police to charge the young woman with perjury but face an uphill battle.

I hope you will listen to this moving story and help me circulate it. https://bettina.social/2MfsR43

Please like my video and make sure you are subscribed. It’s so frustrating seeing my YouTube numbers dropping off due constant censorship.

Music teacher in the clear

Regular viewers of my videos will remember the music teacher falsely accused by some of his female students. At the time I interviewed the poor man the police and Department of Community Services had decided the accusations didn’t stack up but the Department of Education was still refusing to allow him back into NSW schools. Well, they have finally lifted the ban – so that’s good news. Let’s hope his life settles down now although it’s hard to imagine how he will ever totally recover from the damage caused by the malicious social media campaign against him. Here’s a link for those of you who missed out on that video.

Via email from Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au






Children as young as THREE who identify as transgender are being 'fast-tracked' into hormone treatment when they should be sent to counselling, expert says

This is just child abuse -- Left-enabled child abuse

The number of children being referred for transgender treatment has almost quadrupled in the past four years.

New figures have shown a rapid increase across four Australian states - with 727 child patients admitted to a gender clinic in 2018 compared to just 211 in 2014.

Victoria has experienced the greatest rise in young people seeking gender services, and a leading youth psychologist has now hit out at the 'fast tracking' of gender treatment.

'It's a psychic epidemic because the whole thing is being fuelled by a virulent trans lobby who are silencing dissenting voices,' Sydney Dr Dianna Kenny told 7News.

The adolescent specialist has written to the federal government to express her concern about the children seeking service becoming increasingly young.

The new data, obtained by the New South Wales psychologist using a freedom of information request, showed children as young as three years old in Victoria were being referred for gender treatment.

The state has experienced the largest growth in the number of child gender dysphoria cases since 2014, up from 104 to 981.

A paediatrics professor from Western Sydney University has also highlighted issues with the rise in transgender-identifying children.

He said the use of treatments such as those using hormones could cause issues for male fertility down the line and other medical complications.

In total, 2415 children have been referred to a gender treatment clinic in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland since 2014 and 2018.

Concerns have been raised about drugs known as puberty blockers, which proponents say delay the onset of development and give children the chance to self-identify.

But Western ­Sydney University paediatrics professor John Whitehall has hit out at new treatments, saying they lack a scientific basis and are essentially an experiment.

'We should give the psychiatry and psychology a full run before we start castrating children,' he told The Australian.

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Yes, Ministers – collaboration is the answer

Public confidence in Australian school education may be low, but no one could complain about a shortage of official reviews and reports.

High-powered panels and prominent figures continue to produce lengthy publications recommending various strategies to achieve one mighty goal: improve the academic performance of students.

The long list includes the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools (Gonski 2.0), the Independent Review into Rural, Regional and Remote Education and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Strategy 2015.

From the start of this year, all states and territories have signed up to a National School Reform Agreement that has the overarching objective of ensuring that Australian schooling provides a high quality and equitable education for all students. That Agreement will expire on 31 December 2023.

Success will depend on what the Agreement refers to as ‘the long-standing practice of collaboration between all governments to deliver school education reform’.

But wait, there’s more! One of the most important — albeit most abstract — documents guiding Australian school education since 2008 is also being reviewed.

The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, signed by all education ministers serving at the time, has steered the development of the Australian Curriculum and other reforms. It followed the Hobart Declaration (1989) and the Adelaide Declaration (1999).

All these national frameworks have stressed the importance of collaboration. As the Hobart Declaration put it, working together “to enhance Australian schooling” would be the key to success.

But collaboration isn’t easy in a federal system where each jurisdiction has separate responsibility for schools, teachers, curriculum, assessment, student credentials … and so on. There are still far more differences than areas of common practice. Notwithstanding the flexibility states and territories need to do their best work for their own schools and students, this is not leading to the best results.

As ministers consider the review documents landing on their desks, collaboration should be at the very top of the subsequent list of action items. They should insist on an honest assessment of the cost and benefits of education between 1989 and 2019 — particularly as seen through the lens of national agreement and the goals of the three documents.

If nothing else, better collaboration would set a great example to young Australians. After all, isn’t this one of the exciting new 21st century skills they are supposed to be learning?

Ministers would be wise to tread cautiously with regard to all proposals for solutions. Australian education has been all too vulnerable in the past to a range of fads and trends, much of which explains the challenges we face now.

It would be good to think that 30 years of talking about teamwork won’t be wasted.

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Are BHP shareholders on board with crusading boss?

It is a safe bet that the chief executive of BHP won’t deliver a speech about the virtues of capitalism any time soon. A few weeks ago, this column gently nudged Andrew Mackenzie, the Scottish chief executive of BHP, to use his privileged position for something novel, to be an advocate for a system that lifts people out of poverty and drives human flourishing. Instead, his response was to dig in, reaffirming it is his proper role to speak out on social causes, from climate policy to entrenching a separate voice for indigenous people in the Australian Constitution.

Given that Mackenzie is resolute about his righteousness, where does the BHP board stand on these issues? More to the point, what is their role? We won’t hold our breath waiting to hear from BHP chairman Ken MacKenzie and other board members because boards don’t like publicity. They prefer that their highly paid, powerful gigs stay in the background. But the determination of BHP’s chief executive to add BHP’s name and reputation to contested social issues has thrown the role of BHP’s board into the spotlight, and it has some questions to answer.

The board of BHP is responsible for overseeing the governance, management and strategic direction of the company and delivering accountable corporate per­formance. That means it has a duty to ensure that when a chief executive puts the company name to a prominent social issue that potentially affects brand, reputation and shareholder value, proper due diligence is done before reaching that decision. It is not tenable for the board to dodge responsibility by claiming that plunging the company name into contested social issues is within the day-to-day delegation of management.

Here, then, are questions for each of the 10 non-executive BHP board members.

When BHP’s chief said that “deep down our employees want to be more moral and ethical” as justification to take positions on social issues, how does the board determine what moral and ethical issues BHP should involve itself in? What empirical evidence is there for Mackenzie’s claim about what BHP’s employees want? Did he take a survey or is he just assuming his personal views are shared by BHP employees? And how strong are the employee views; are their views on the voice evenly divided or overwhelmingly in favour? Are their views lukewarm or strongly held? And how much do they understand about the constitutional implications of the voice? Drilling down further, how does the board satisfy itself about how the nuts and bolts of these “moral and ethical” stances will affect shareholder value? The board can’t be satisfied with a chief executive doing a Dennis Denuto, arguing “the vibe of the thing”.

The BHP board must ensure correct procedures and policies are in place to protect shareholders, and shareholders are entitled to assurance that the board carefully supervised how social issues are chosen and positions reached. What has the board done to ensure BHP’s management team, led by Mackenzie, has considered all relevant issues? In other words, what kind of management work is required before BHP puts its name to a social issue, be it a separate voice for indigenous people or telling BHP customers how to use coal bought from BHP? Are papers presented to the board about the pros and cons of adopting one position over another? Are there detailed background briefings on the long-term consequences, political and legal, of entrenching a separate voice in the Constitution or the long-term economic effects of BHP dictating to customers how they use BHP’s coal? If not, how can the board meet its duty to shareholders to oversee rigorous decision-making processes at BHP? Or is the board happy for Mackenzie to commit the company to divisive social and political stances based on a feeling in his waters?

BHP’s chief executive spoke last week in broad brushstrokes about “morals and ethics” and being in the “middle of the road”. But has the board of BHP demanded further details to test whether he is acting in their best interests by signing BHP’s name to a constitutionally entrenched voice for one class of Australians? For example, a separate indigenous voice raises a fundamental issue about parliamentary sovereignty given that, once set in the Constitution, federal parliament will not have the power to abolish the voice. How middle-of-the-road is that? Has Mackenzie and each of BHP’s board members satisfied themselves that this won’t fundamentally alter our democratic model for the worse? More important, what long-term projections has Mackenzie brought to the BHP board about the impact on shareholder value of a constitutionally entrenched voice?

And how does BHP’s board feel about the chief executive in effect saying opponents of a constitutionally entrenched voice, such as Scott Morrison, are immoral and unethical?

Each year, boards sign off on their company’s environmental, social and governance statements in their annual report. Where is the assurance from the BHP board that the company has effective corporate governance practices that ensure its chief executive is using its platform and brand for the tangible benefit of shareholders, rather than as a platform to promote their own personal social preferences? If the board of BHP has not set down proper decision-making processes around Mackenzie’s call to plunge BHP into contested social issues, why not? And where is the regulator on this issue, given corporate virtue-signalling is becoming more endemic by the day? When a chief executive assumes the role of corporate cleric, attaching the company’s name to social reforms without knowing the full ramifications to the company, it is not some innocuous act that can be ignored by boards or regulators.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission has recently been plugging the benefits of putting a psychologist into corporate boardrooms to test the risks of pushy chief executives getting their way without proper board oversight. What does ASIC have to say about a culture that appears to give chief executives a free pass to attach company names to contested social issues? Watch the regulator dodge this one, another issue for the already bursting too-hard basket.

And what about some guidance from the Australian Securities Exchange? The latest edition of the ASX corporate governance principles offers up a long list of measures for company boards to follow as a matter of best practice, including new board responsibilities to help set the appropriate risk appetite, overseeing and challenging management and new measures to encourage better disclosure of environmental, social and governance risks. Given the rise of corporate virtue-signalling, isn’t it time that ASX corporate governance principles be read to require proper oversight of processes around how management decides on social activism, sifting the harmless from the potentially harmful? A board serious about its role would be doing this already.

It is discouraging, to say the least, if BHP’s board is not properly checking Mackenzie’s social frolics. Shareholders are entitled to know whether the board of BHP is providing the proper oversight of a chief executive who remains determined to sign the company name to highly contested causes with unknown legal, political and social consequences. The boards of other big Australian companies are on notice, too.

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 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here