Mission & Justice

28/5/08

A victim of family violence will in future get a protection order at any time of the day if efforts by the Magisterial Services to improve access to justice for these people go as planned. Part of the process towards achieving this goal, as well as improving other services in the law and justice sector, begins with consultative meetings and workshops tomorrow. The meetings, organised under the practice direction on family and sexual violence project, will be held in different parts of the country. The first will be held in Lae tomorrow.

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5/5/08

The Reverend Marcial Maciel once looked like a shoo-in for sainthood, but the charismatic leader of one of the most important orders in the Catholic Church has ended his life better known as the highest ranking priest ever disciplined because of sexual abuse allegations. The leader of the Legionaries of Christ - the order Maciel founded in Mexico in 1941 - informed the congregation of his death at 87 in a letter that mixed expressions of devastating loss with the news the funeral would be private.

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Stephen Lunn; 5/5/08

The social development of many young Australians may be stunted because potential male role models will not engage with them for fear of being wrongly accused of child abuse. Men are worried about putting themselves in positions where such an allegation may be levelled against them, either within families and more broadly at school or in social settings such as team sports, warns Australian Institute of Family Studies director Alan Hayes. This may add to the problems of the current generation of children, who are more anxious and have more developmental problems and mental health issues than previously, he says.

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Patricia Karvelas; 15/4/08

Indigenous people have suffered the most under welfare reforms that lead to benefits being stopped for eight weeks for people who fail to comply with the regulations imposed by the Howard government. And the Rudd Government has been condemned for not ending the system, despite promising to do so while in Opposition. New figures show that the number of people who have had their payments stopped has more than doubled over the past eight months. Under the regime, recipients who make three mistakes suffer an immediate loss of payment for eight weeks.

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