Victim Upbeat As Commission Makes an Impressive Start

By Barney Zwartz
Wa Today
April 4, 2013

http://www.watoday.com.au/national/victim-upbeat-as-commission-makes-an-impressive-start-20130403-2h74n.html

Barney Zwartz

Analysis

Twenty years ago Bill Nelson left court a crushed man, his solicitors telling him to give up his quest for redress as a child sex abuse victim because the Catholic Church had all the power.

On Wednesday he sat in room 3.3 of the County Court awaiting the opening hearing of the royal commission on child sex abuse and reflected: ''Now I'm in court, and it's on our side. It's huge, it's historic!''

His eager anticipation exemplified the mood of the victims who filled the courtroom to hear commission chairman Peter McClellan outline the plans, processes and priorities for the coming years.

And what they heard was highly encouraging. Justice McClellan was frank and forthright. The commission will be expensive. It will struggle to finish by the end of 2015. It is an enormous and complex undertaking that will hear from thousands of victims, and from many institutions, mostly taking a highly defensive posture.

But they have analysed how to simplify the task, while being fair and balanced, and they have already been active: meeting advocacy groups and police, demanding documents, hiring staff, following up previous inquiries, setting up a research arm and more, while planning how to proceed.

The decision to begin with five months of private hearings, in neutral locations before one or two commissioners at a time, might seem a slow start but it is the opposite. It will bring the six commissioners quickly up to speed about the scope of the problem, give large numbers of victims the voice for which they have yearned so long - in a non-adversarial context and without pressure, while still allowing the option of formal evidence later - and enable an intelligent and directed focus when formal hearings start.

Justice McClellan also promised to work as transparently and publicly as possible, which is a vital aspect.

The commission's most important work, short of the recommendations, has been done: finding a structure that will allow the most voices across the broadest spectrum in the quickest time, and enabling careful targeting of witnesses. Inevitably problems will emerge, but this is a most impressive start.