Royal Commission Begins with Warning about Workload

ABC - the World Today
April 3, 2013

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3728678.htm

ELEANOR HALL: Let's go now to Melbourne, where the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse has opened this morning. The hearing began with a warning about the size of the Commission's workload and a prediction that it won't meet its reporting deadline.

The chairman, Justice Peter McClellan, said he expects many thousands of witnesses to give evidence about suffering sexual abuse in institutions.

Simon Lauder was at the County Court in Melbourne as the inquiry began and he joins us now.

Simon, the Commissioner is clearly indicating that he has a very large task. Just how wide-ranging is this inquiry?

SIMON LAUDER: It's possibly Australia's most wide-ranging Royal Commission ever. The name says it all really, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. So that's anyone under the age of 18 whose been, who was abused in any institution, be it private or government run and that can be a sporting institution, an educational one.

There's no limits on that. There's no limit on the timeframe. So it's very clear the first priority and its biggest task is to hear from people who've been sexually abused as children in institutions.

The chairman of the Commission, Justice Peter McClellan, says he expects about 5,000 victims to come forward and some victims' groups say it's going to be a lot more than that. The Commission has been asked to hand its final report to the Government by 2015 but Justice McClellan says that deadline is not looking very likely at all.

There have been questions about what powers the Royal Commission will have and what it's prepared to do. Justice McClellan opened the Royal Commission this morning by saying that society has changed a lot over recent decades and now there's a greater preparedness to challenge authority.

He then went on to announce that the Royal Commission expects institutions which have confidentiality clauses with victims to waive those agreements to allow people to speak - not only victims but also people who work for the institutions. He said that if they don't, the Royal Commission has powers to overcome that.

This is how Justice McClellan summed up the role he believes the Commissioners have to fill.

PETER MCCLELLAN: The Commissioners accept that on behalf of the nation, they have been asked to bear witness to the past experiences of those who have suffered child sexual abuse in institutions. We have a responsibility to use those accounts to make further inquiry and ultimately to provide an authoritative account of the events and make recommendations about the way forward.

ELEANOR HALL: That's the chairman of the Commission, Justice Peter McClellan. So Simon, did the Commissioner's remarks this morning clarify where he's going to concentrate his efforts?

SIMON LAUDER: At this stage he says they're going to work as hard as they can to meet that deadline for an interim report. That deadline is mid next year, and the Commissioners have only been together as a group since February. So they don't yet have all the staff they need to run the Royal Commission.

That's one of their first jobs, to get more staff on board. But they're already exercising their powers. Justice McClellan says orders have been served on the Catholic Church and the Salvation Army and the DPP in New South Wales. So there won't be any public hearings until late this year.

They won't be ready until then. The Commission has set up a telephone hotline for victims who want to tell their story and it's giving them various options to do so, including private sessions and they’re going to travel around Australia to hear people's stories and record them.

They're also making contact with prosecuting authorities in each state and territory, and that's because the Commission won't play any role in prosecuting cases. The senior counsel for the Royal Commission, Gail Furness, told that to the Commission this morning. She said that the Royal Commission won't be prosecuting any individual cases.

GAIL FURNESS: The Royal Commission is not a court and it is not a prosecutor. Its investigation will be conducted with the aim of understanding the response of an institution to an allegation of child sexual abuse.

It will not make findings that a named individual was sexually abused by a named person within an institution. It will, however, in appropriate cases, and after according procedural fairness, make findings about the conduct of institutions and individuals within those institutions in responding to allegations of child sexual abuse.

ELEANOR HALL: And that's the senior counsel for the Royal Commission, Gail Furness.

Now Simon, some people have been pushing for a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse for decades. Some of them were in the court today. What was their response?

SIMON LAUDER: Yeah the courtroom was pretty packed and there was an air of excitement, even elation, the day has finally come. People, as you say, have been pushing for this for many years and I think that there'd been many dark years there where people thought it would never happen. And now finally they're going to see a light shone on the institutions which were responsible for so much pain.

And there were gasps and little fist pumps as the counsel assisting told the court that they were going to take a pretty broad view of the abuse, and that is that some physical abuse may be considered as well if it happened alongside what else happened in those institutions. So their day is here and the victims are pretty much welcoming it openly.

ELEANOR HALL: Simon Lauder, who was at the County Court in Melbourne as that inquiry, the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, opened this morning.