Papers & reports

It's all sexual assault: A service response in the face of the clergy abuse crisis

Shireen Gunn & Andrea Lockhart, Ballarat CASA (2014)

In 2012 Ballarat CASA found itself in the position of needing to respond to a steady increase of new referrals for men aged in their forties and fifties. At that time, the Victorian Parliament Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Religious and Other Organizations began to reveal the extent of the abuse that had occurred, particularly in Catholic Institutions in Ballarat.

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Keep following the yellow brick road. The trials, tribulations and triumphs of colocated police, child protection and sexual assault workers

Carolyn Worth (2016)

Victoria has a new model for delivering services to victims of sexual assault and family violence. They are Multidisciplinary Centres, or MDCs. These are partnerships of Victoria Police Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Teams (SOCITS), Counsellor/Advocates from Centres Against Sexual Assault, Forensic Physicians from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and Child Protection Workers from the Department of Health and Human Services. In this new model all of these agencies are located in one building giving victims a one stop shop for service delivery.

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Making Rights Reality

Carolyn Worth (2013)

Making Rights Reality (MRR) is a pilot program run by the South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault, Springvale Monash Community Legal Centre and the Federation of Community Legal Services. This program started in February 2012 and is due to run until February 2014. It is being evaluated by La Trobe University.

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Psychopathology in a large cohort of sexually abused children followed up to 43 years

Margaret C. Cutajar, Paul E. Mullen, James R.P. Ogloff, Stuart D. Thomas, David L. Wells & Josie Spataro (2010)

Research over the last 30 years has established a significant relationship between giving a history of being sexually abused in childhood and a range of mental health and behavioral problems in adult life. The methodologies employed to establish this association in the early years used predominately cross-sectional studies on either patient groups or convenience samples. More sophisticated studies utilizing large random community samples, birth cohorts, and twin cohorts have provided evidence arguably of greater reliability and generalizability.

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Restorative justice, sexual assault & family violence

Carolyn Worth (2016)

My first real contact with the concept of restorative justice was in August 2008 through an invitation from the Victorian Association for Restorative Justice (VARJ) to attend a meeting entitled Sex Offending and Family Violence: A restorative approach – a facilitated roundtable dialogue. The invitation came with an very impressive list of participants including academics, Magistrate’s, bureaucrats, researchers, defence force personnel and members of religious organisations.

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Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders in a Cohort of Sexually Abused Children

Margaret C. Cutajar, Paul E. Mullen, James R. P. Ogloff, Stuart D. Thomas, David L. Wells & Josie Spataro (2010)

There have been a large number of clinical studies, of widely differing methodological sophistication, based on the frequency with which patients with either schizophrenic syndromes or psychotic symptoms retrospectively report CSA, the results of which, though inconsistent, predominantly support an association.

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Shared Counselling Pilot Program 2005

Pauline Gilbert (2005)

CASA House began discussing the shared counselling model in late 2003 at staff meetings, and from these discussions formed a working party to explore the possibilities and prepare a recommendation. A literature search was undertaken that supported a positive response from participants and the practical and beneficial effectiveness of the shared counselling model.

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Social Media and Its Uses in Helping Victims of Sexual Assault

Carolyn Worth (2011)

This paper offers an alternate view about social media and its possibilities for victims of sexual assault to the e-crime version where people are at risk of predators. It also looks at some of the questions we receive from users of social media and how we deal with the issues.

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Speaking Out Against Sexual Assault

Judy Flanagan & Loren Imbriano (2012)

“Speaking Out Against Sexual Assault” is a primary prevention initiative which seeks to influence a change in community attitudes to prevent violence against women. Through media and public speaking opportunities, the project aims to challenge commonly held beliefs and stereotypes around the issue of sexual assault. Senior staff and victim/survivors of sexual assault have been trained to understand how the media works and how to effectively respond to the media.

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Taking Sexual Assault Service to Rural Areas

Helen Wilson and John McCormack PHD (2010)

This paper is about a very ordinary activity of CASAs: that of visiting services and of taking our service closer to where people live. It is an ordinary every day activity, but one that I feel passionate and concerned about. It is extremely relevant to rural areas and for a couple of weeks was a political hot potato as the three independent politicians have forced attention on the inequities experienced by regional Australia.

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