Griffith Research Fellows Awarded ARC Discovery Project in Comparative Criminal Justice History
The Prosecution Project’s research fellow, Amanda Kaladelfos, and Griffith University research fellow, Nina Westera, with their colleagues Lisa Featherstone (Newcastle) and Carolyn Strange (ANU) have been granted an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Award enabling comparative historical research into the enduring problems of sexual abuse and sexual offending. Their project contrasts 100 years of Australian and Canadian historical responses to sexual offending.
Project Title:
Sexual Offences, Legal Responses, and Public Perceptions: 1880s-1980s
Project Investigators:
Lisa Featherstone (Newcastle), Amanda Kaladelfos (Griffith), Carolyn Strange (ANU), Nina Westera (Griffith)
Project Summary:
Testimony of sexual abuse before the current Royal Commission has exposed the historic neglect and cover-up of institutional offences. Yet, to unearth the deeper and wider dimensions of sexual offending requires scholarly historical analysis. This project aims to use qualitative and quantitative analysis to track how and why certain forms of sexual behaviour sparked public concern and provoked legal responses and public inquiries from the 1880s to the 1980s. The systematic examination of these patterns through archival and published documents is intended to test the relation between shifting community and political concerns and the conduct of criminal trials.