Looking after both victims of the ADFA incident remains vital

Yet more uninformed criticism of the ADA when the truth could easily be learned by a modicum of research and objectivity.

Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Monday, 02 April 2012)

Howard Carew (Letters, March 19) again claims to have missed all the Australia Defence Association material sticking up for the female victim of the ADFA incident last year.

Assuming Mr Carew's professed lack of knowledge remains accidentally mistaken, he can easily update himself from the ADA website.

This includes numerous letters defending her rights oddly not published by The Canberra Times before and after Mr Carew's previous mistaken letters on this subject.

Mr Carew also confuses public clamour with informed, careful and necessarily discreet support for her return to the Academy and potential for an ADF career.

Group dynamics remain important here.

Unfairly or not, some of her fellow cadets blame her alone for the subsequent avalanche of inaccurate and sensationalist media coverage and misinformed (at best) public hysteria that has wrongly continued to slander them all.

Even more importantly, to protect her privacy, health and rights at the forthcoming civil trial of the alleged perpetrators, much of the defence force, ADA and other community effort on her behalf cannot be public.

Finally, Mr Carew would perhaps be much better informed if he read, listened or conversed more widely than the necessarily limited pages of The Canberra Times.