Take the recent case where the National Library, releasing in 2006 the diaries of prominent twentieth century Australian painter (and self-confessed pederast) Donald Friend, published the names of his Balinese child victims (and disturbing descriptions of the assaults) on the apparent assumption that the Australian laws prohibiting the identification of sexual assault victims might not apply to foreign nationals.
A documentary on the subject has recently been released by Kelly Negara (the sickeningly-named "A Loving Friend"), in which the following points are made:
- The publication of the names of child sexual assault victims is against the law in Australia, and was in 2006 when the volume in question was published;
- The National Library contacted Australians mentioned in the diaries before publication to seek their consent to the passages relating to them - but not the Balinese victims of the assaults described;
- It was not difficult for Kerry Negara to find these victims in Bali; the Library didn't appear to have even tried;
- Several of these victims are very embarrassed and concerned that their names are now in the public arena in Indonesia where there could be serious ramifications for them.
Radio National's Law Report covered the issue in its program last week, and put the above issues to the Library's representative, editor Paul Hetherington, who demonstrated firmly just how much the National Library doesn't get it.
Damien Carrick: In the recently launched documentary there is criticism that parts of the arts establishment and perhaps the diaries themselves, don't face squarely Donald Friend's abuse of children. When it comes to the diaries, what's your view of that implication?
Paul Hetherington: Well, I mean, I don't really want to comment on the documentary, but I will say that Friend's activities and attitudes have met throughout his life and still to this day, met with a wide range of responses. And one of the interesting things about the diaries, in publishing them, is that people are entitled and should make up their own minds about what they think of Friend and these activities and his artistic work. All I can say is that I think in publishing the diaries as we have—as I said, as frankly as we can, allowing for the issues of sensitivity that were so important to us—if we didn't want to face up to issues we simply wouldn't have gone on and published this material and made it available. So I'd simply say that we've done the one thing that really faces up to this material as squarely as you possibly can: that is, to publish it, to make it accessible and available, and to provide fairly exhaustive notes—editorial notes—about the material, and introduction to the material in all of the volumes so that it's also contextualised. And I think that's an important part of the process.
Here, for the sake of comparison, is how a Paul Hetherington without a creepily neutral approach to child abuse would have responded to that question: "The arts community condemns outright the abuse of children. We think there is historical value in Donald Friend's diaries, and his art is obviously of major importance, but we don't shy away from the appallingness of his criminal behaviour."
Likewise, he could almost certainly have done better here:
Damien Carrick: Given the extraordinary sensitivity of the material—this man was a child at the time, descriptions of sex between adults and children—why was he named?
Paul Hetherington: I don't know that we can go today into the complexity of the relationships between Friend and the young men and women who worked as houseboys, essentially—that's how he saw them—in the 1960s and 1970s in Bali. But essentially when editing diary material, it's very important obviously to try to keep integrity of the material and also to treat that material as sensitively as possible. What we did throughout editing the diaries, even though the diary volumes publish about a million words—we obviously edited out about another million or so—we tried to look at all those kinds of issues and we didn't want to entirely censor the diaries obviously, in terms of leaving out certain aspects of Friend's activities, otherwise that wouldn't have, in a sense, respected the integrity of Friend's own life and of the diary material; at the same time we did want to treat material of an intimate nature as sensitively as possible and all I can say is that we did that right throughout from the beginning to the end. If we have published material that is upsetting, relating to the Bali material, then that's regrettable, but it certainly wasn't our intention. And all I can say, it was a very difficult process and it's unfortunate if we've made an error in one instance.
Ah yes, the "complexity" of Friend's admitted abuse of "houseboys". How on Earth can we "go today into the complexity"? It's so complex!
("An" error? In "one" instance?)
And here Hetherington even tries to run a "hey, he may have abused them, but he helped them in other ways" line (after disingenuously ducking the question the first time):
Damien Carrick: ...I asked National Library of Australia editor Paul Hetherington to describe Donald Friend's relationship with children.
Paul Hetherington: He loved drawing and painting youthful figures. They figure in his artwork a great deal.
Damien Carrick: I guess we're talking about there his art, but in terms of his relationships with children and young people, both sexual and otherwise, how would you describe that aspect of him?
Paul Hetherington: Well look, I really can't say a great deal about that, other than to say that he had all sorts of relationships in his life. For example, Madja, one of the boys in Bali, he sponsored to the extent that he brought him out to Australia for major operations to improve his health and enable him to lead a more normal existence because the health issue he had prevented that happening to some extent. So he did all sorts of generous things. There are other activities which perhaps were more questionable, but in the end, I think the key thing to remember about Friend is that he was a highly complex figure, and that's the important thing to remember, and that in reading the diaries, the complexities are all on show. We wanted, in publishing these very important diaries, not only to make the cultural and documentary material available, but to present a kind of self-portrait, a very complex and interesting self-portrait of a man who presents himself I think relatively accurately and with great acuity, which is a rare thing when people are writing about themselves. So I guess I would say that the best person to consult about his relationships, with everybody, is Friend himself. It's in the diaries, and it's very interesting and complex and candid.
So close! What Paul meant to say was "that is of course appallingly criminal behaviour which any decent person abhors and condemns" - he just has this nervous tic where that sentence inadvertently comes out as a dirge of vague, morally bankrupt child-abuse-excusing drivel.
Here's another opportunity to respond like a compassionate human being sadly lost -
Damien Carrick: What do you think of Kerry Negara's documentary, A Loving Friend?
Paul Hetherington: Well, look, I've only had a chance recently to look at it briefly and I don't think I'd like to comment on it at the moment.
How about - "We're certainly concerned by the issues it raises and will be looking to address them as appropriately as possible"? Oh, Paul. So close!
It appears still not to have occurred to Hetherington that the National Library could have published the volumes simply censoring the names - as it would if the victims were Australian children - and that not doing so was an awful, stupid, avoidable cock-up that will cause these victims real harm now, in 2008. And that having made that cock-up, perhaps the National Library ought to take responsibility and say "sorry".
They're certainly good enough at apologising for other people.
UPDATE Looks like Andrew Bolt has already looked at this, his predictable response being to exaggerate the pissweak response of some in the arts community, to cover the lot of them ("No artist can be a pedophile, it seems"). Still, if prominent Art Gallery directors and curators are going to attempt to (entirely unnecessarily) defend the indefensible, they can hardly be surprised at how it'll be used by people like Bolt.
