Joanne McCarthy: Abused in Uphill Battle

Newcastle Herald
December 3, 2012

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1160062/joanne-mccarthy-abused-in-uphill-battle/?cs=308

ON November 5 I contacted the Salvation Army about professional misconduct charges against two solicitors who represented it in a NSW Supreme Court compensation case brought by Bucketty man Graham Rundle.

Mr Rundle was repeatedly and savagely sexually assaulted by a Salvation Army officer at a Salvation Army boys’ home in South Australia in the 1960s.

I asked the Salvation Army to comment on its handling of Mr Rundle’s case, given that his rapist, William Ellis, was jailed for 16 years in 2009 after a truly extraordinary criminal trial in South Australia, and given the church’s sustained challenges to his ultimately successful compensation case.

In the email I noted the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner had referred professional misconduct recommendations against the two solicitors to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Mr Rundle first made his complaint against the solicitors in August 2007, shortly after three NSW Court of Appeal judges confirmed a NSW Supreme Court judge’s concerns about evidence by the solicitors during Mr Rundle’s compensation case.

The complaint was not investigated until August 2010, after Mr Rundle won substantial compensation from the Salvation Army.

In October 2011, the Legal Services Commissioner’s office advised Mr Rundle it had brought charges against the solicitors, and the matter would be referred to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

A hearing in June this year did not go ahead. The Salvation Army advised that ‘‘two interstate witnesses were not available’’.

I interviewed Graham Rundle in October, after he contacted me following a meeting in Sydney where I spoke about the need for a royal commission because people who had been sexually abused as children were left to battle powerful institutions alone for too long.

An article about Mr Rundle appeared in the Newcastle Herald on November 10 – the day after Premier Barry O’Farrell announced a commission of inquiry into child sex allegations in the Hunter, and two days before Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a royal commission into child sex abuse.

The Salvation Army replied on November 8, saying the Legal Services Commissioner had withdrawn the charges after a review and the solicitors had been ‘‘vindicated’’.

Last Wednesday I checked with the Civil and Administrative Tribunal. A two-day hearing of the charges was still listed for December 6 and 7.

On Thursday I contacted the Legal Services Commissioner’s office and asked for an update on Mr Rundle’s complaint. On Friday it emailed a statement confirming it was not proceeding with charges against the solicitors and noting that ‘‘in late November the defendants produced new information’’.

The ‘‘new information’’ had not appeared in ‘‘full written explanations of their conduct during the early stages of the investigation’’, or after the matter was referred to the tribunal in October 2011, but only as the matter was due for a public hearing this week.

I asked a representative of the commissioner’s office if Mr Rundle had been informed. I was told the solicitors had only just been informed and Mr Rundle was about to be. I then asked the representative how I was supposed to view the matter, given the Salvation Army had released a statement on November 8  saying the charges against the solicitors had been withdrawn by the commissioner’s office after a review.

Within a short time I received a phone call from the commissioner, Michael McGarvie.

The ‘‘new information’’ was proof they acted on legal advice when giving the evidence in court that caused the judges  concern.  Thus ‘‘this shifts the matter from being a misconduct trial to a very unfortunate case’’, he said.

In an interview in April last year Mr McGarvie, then the new Legal Services Commissioner, acknowledged the Victorian Ombudsman’s scathing criticism of the commission in its 2009 report, and said things had improved.

Graham Rundle is preparing his complaint for the Ombudsman.