Child Abuse Royal Commission Announcement Moves Victims to Tears
Herald Sun
[with video] AS Australians begin to appreciate the gravity of the Prime Minister's royal commission into child abuse, victims have emotionally welcomed the "necessary cleansing" of evil. Peter Blenkiron, a victim of abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers, spoke to fellow survivors who were in tears when they heard that Julia Gillard had set up a royal commission into child sex abuse by members of the church and other organisations. "This is massive. I've just been speaking to blokes in tears, tears of joy," Mr Blenkiron said. "People have asked me what about the hardship it's going to create for everybody. It's a necessary short-term pain for long-term gain that brings out the truth." Prime Minister announces wide-ranging royal commission into child abuse Mr Blenkiron hit out at Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, who said calls for a royal commission were disproportionate. "It's not church bashing, this is a necessary cleansing to remove pure evil from organisations that call themselves religious bodies," he said. "What organisation would want those evil men as part of them?" And he also savaged Cardinal Pell's claim that victims got justice when the church apologised. Mr Blenkiron says no victim he knows believes they have ever received justice. "Tell him to look up complex post traumatic stress disorder syndrome. That doesn't go away, that stays with you for life and most often it ends your life," he said. "And tell him to then support a system that will keep those people alive who need the help as a result of his church that he supported and he watched. All this evil was on his watch." Mr Blenkiron said it was was vital that a royal commission urgently address the number of victims still taking their lives, decades after being abused. "We've got people dying today, so they need to put some sort of temporary solution in place to keep people alive. That's critical, absolutely critical." Mr Blenkiron, who attended St Patrick's College, Ballarat, in the 1970s when hundreds of boys were abused, said it was also vital to set up a compensation scheme to help survivors pay the massive medical costs associated with their abuse. After Ms Gillard's announcement, Cardinal Pell said the public remained unconvinced the church had adequately dealt with sexual abuse. "I believe the air should be cleared and the truth uncovered," he said in a statement. "We shall co-operate fully with the royal commission." Wendy Tuohy: Decades of holy hell Lawyer Vivian Waller, who has represented victims of church abuse for 25 years and has campaigned for a royal commission for close to a decade, said she had doubted this day would ever come. "I think this is a wonderful step in the right direction," she said. "I can express relief and elation on behalf of my clients, who for too long have thought the Catholic church has acted as a law unto itself." Stephen Woods, who was abused by Catholic clergymen from the age of 11, hoped the commission would help on his road to recovery. "When you're believed, it makes you feel a little bit more powerful in one way that, yes, I can overcome this, I can deal with this, this wasn't my fault," he told ABC television. He described the abuse he suffered at the hands of the clergymen. "He would molest you in the front of the class. "While, say, you were reading a book ... he'd have his hands up your shorts. "Or he'd take me into his office where he used to make me strip and he would masturbate behind his desk." In her words: From the office of the PM Nicky Davis from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said her first reaction to the announcement was to hug her son and sob with joy. "Our suffering is being recognised, our voices are being heard and this is a wonderful thing," she told ABC television. Victims wouldn't be able to heal while the truth was covered up, Ms Davis said. She urged the prime minister to ensure that victims' voices were heard when the commission's terms of reference were put together. "We are the experts in how they managed to get away with this for so long," she said. The Victorian government has been conducting its own parliamentary inquiry into sexual abuse of children by clergy, which Premier Ted Baillieu said had provided the opportunity for a national focus on the issue. "It is clear that there have been a substantial number of established complaints of sexual abuse of children by those who have taken advantage of positions of authority," he said in a statement. "This abuse is abhorrent and it has had traumatic consequences for victims and their families. "It is important that we do whatever we can to prevent it from happening and bring those who are perpetrators of child abuse to justice." Priests 'used guns, dogs against kids' Broken Rites, a long-time campaigner for justice for children abused by pedophile priests, says it wants to see outcomes for victims. President Chris MacIsaac says it has been a long, hard battle and he now wants to see the Catholic church speak frankly about what it knows. "We want an outcome that will benefit victims, to see recommendations made that actually help victims," Ms MacIsaac told AAP. "They want the actual knowledge that the church accepts that these crimes took place so they can shake off their guilt and begin to rebuild their lives. "It's certainly time that the church shed some of what it knows about what's happened over the last 20 to 30 years." Independent federal MP Tony Windsor said the royal commission would not be a "witch hunt". "It's about giving the victims of child sexual abuse access to justice and in so doing give them hope that they can have a future in which they can move on from the past," he said. NSW premier Barry O'Farrell welcomed the announcement. "These heinous offences don't stop at state boundaries," he said. Another child sex abuse victim says the royal commission is long overdue. Peter Fox, cyber warrior. Read one detective's story here Robert Lipari, who claims to have been sexually abused by a former teacher at a NSW Catholic school in the 1970s, hopes that it will at last lead to perpetrators of abuse being brought to justice. "I want these people that are accountable to be brought to task - it's very clear and simple," Mr Lipari said. "The church has tried every defence under the sun to avoid prosecutions." His claims of abuse, which include being assaulted in a caravan, in a classroom and on a boat during a fishing trip, were allegedly not passed on to police. This was despite his allegations being included in a 2011 internal church report by a retired NSW assistant police commissioner. Mr Lipari said the church had tried to "draw a line in the sand" over the allegations, stressing that their past conduct must be investigated in detail. He believes heads could roll as a result of the commission. "I don't believe the Catholic church in Australia will fold, but those people at the very top of the pile could go," he said. Mr Lipari said he was "ecstatic" the ball was now in motion with the launch of the commission. "We're not those 13-year-old kids who can be frightened into silence any more, and they're scared of that. "The Catholic Church is my church. I put my faith in Jesus - just not in the people who wear the cloth." The Brotherhood of St Laurence says a royal commission is long overdue and it hopes it will bring crimes committed against children out into the open. Bipartisan effort: Abbott supports commission call Executive director Tony Nicholson said it was obscene that institutions had covered up their crimes for decades. "We welcome this announcement, but it is well overdue," Mr Nicholson said. "It's obscene that institutions have for so long chosen to cover up crimes against the most vulnerable - our children - and have failed to report it to the police." It was important the terms of reference, still to be announced by Ms Gillard, were comprehensive. "Once and for all we can get these crimes into the open," Mr Nicholson said. Arrested: Brother, former teacher face allegations in NSW The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said as individuals they shared the feelings of horror and outrage all decent people felt reading the reports of sexual abuse and allegations of cover ups, but as a group it has rejected talk of systemic abuse within the church. "While there were significant problems concerning some dioceses and some religious orders, talk of a systemic problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic church is ill-founded and inconsistent with the facts," they said in a statement. The bishops believe it would help determine the scope of the royal commission if police and child protection authorities released the information they have about the number of cases they are dealing with now and the situations in which they have arisen - families, government organisations and non-government organisations, including churches.
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