Breathing Underwater—Swimming in the Sea of Collective Trauma

Abstract

My response focuses on the two main issues raised by the three discussants: first, the complex forms of relationality that characterize both individual and group trauma and responses to trauma, and second, the function of vicarious trauma that is produced for witnesses and onlookers and the ways in which this enables a third space to develop with healing properties. I explore these two issues by returning to the work of the Royal Commission with an account of my experience of attending Case Study 43 in September 2016.

Notes

¹ The final report on Ballarat from the Royal Commissioners is yet to be published. It will be a very important document especially in validating the experiences of survivors and the failure of the clergy leaders to intercept priest perpetrators. Without doubt the report will be seen as a vindication of the various carrier groups and survivors who struggled for years to bring the issue of child sexual abuse into the public eye.

² A well-known metaphor for pedophiles is a “rock spider.” This was apparently coined in prison culture and refers to how rock spiders get into “cracks.”

³ Jill Meagher was a well-known Melbourne journalist who was raped and murdered while walking home one night in September 2012. The man responsible has since been jailed for 40 years, also for the rape of three other women in Melbourne. Her death generated a lot of media interest and public sympathy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathleen McPhillips

Kathleen McPhillips, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her work addressed the intersections between religion, gender, and trauma studies. She is currently attending the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as a social researcher, funded by the University of Newcastle. She is also a clinical psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of early trauma with a private practice in Newcastle.