Inquiry to Challenge Powerful Bodies
Big Pond News
Stories have been gathered and parameters set, now Australia will see the behaviour of powerful institutions challenged as never before. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse holds its first public hearing in Sydney on Monday and the focus will be on how institutions, including influential church and state bodies, handled complaints that children in their care were sexually abused. For thousands of Australians damaged for life by institutionally-protected sex offenders, the hearings represent longed-for acknowledgement and the best hope of opening the door to redress. For advocacy group Broken Rites, which since 1993 has pressed for a Royal Commission into how churches handle child-sex crimes, the hearings are a path to justice. The Melbourne-based organisation represents victims, some of whom have been put through lengthy and often traumatising church investigations. 'Many church victims have been forced to remain silent,' Dr Bernard Barrett, spokesman for Broken Rites told AAP. 'The Royal Commission gives them the opportunity to seek justice'. Lawyer and child abuse researcher Judy Courtin, who represented victims at a Victorian inquiry into child sex abuse, says she believes many people would be awaiting the public hearings with a mixture of hope and trepidation. There is also a risk the public hearings could resurrect buried childhood traumas, she says. 'It is early in the proceedings but overall there is a sense of quiet hope,' she said. In the public hearings the commission will look at how institutions shared information and what they did once allegations were made. In other words: were some of these very powerful bodies more interested in protecting themselves than children, and if so why? Since the commission was formally established in April, people across the country have been telling their stories to individual commissioners in private sessions. They are stories of heart-wrenching childhood abuse at the hands of clergy, teachers, carers and youth workers - people working for state bodies, churches or charities. The chairman of the commission, Justice Peter McClellan AM, told a lunch for child advocacy group Bravehearts in Brisbane that Australia would be shocked at what had been uncovered. Justice McClellan said that while it was now well known that the sexual abuse of children had been widespread in the Australian community, the full range of institutions in which it had occurred was not generally understood. Neither, in his view, was the devastating impact on victims' lives. Up to 2000 people have already come forward to tell, or are waiting to tell, of their experiences. 'We receive an average of 23 new calls a day and perhaps 10 of them will lead to a private session,' Justice McClellan said. He expects the rate to increase once public hearings start. The first hearing will be at the commission offices in Governor Macquarie Tower, Sydney, and will shine the spotlight on branches of Scouts Australia, the Hunter Aboriginal Children's Services and the NSW Department of Community Services (DOCS). They will be asked what they knew of child sex abuse allegations against convicted pedophile Steve 'Skip' Larkins. Larkins, former chief executive of a Newcastle-based foster care agency for Aboriginal children was not revealed as a child sex offender until 2011 when police investigating child pornography allegations uncovered sex abuse complaints from the 1990s. He is now in jail for these offences. The commission will want to know what checks were carried out on Larkins' suitability to have parental responsibilities for very vulnerable Aboriginal children. It is now almost a year since then prime minister, Julia Gillard, announced a Royal Commission after NSW senior police officer Peter Fox alleged cover-ups by the police and the Catholic Church. His shocking revelations of child-sex abuse reverberated and a number of states set up their own inquiries. Some are ongoing and the national commission will take their findings on board. At the formal opening in Melbourne last April, chairman of the commission Justice Peter McClellan, spoke of its role in bringing about change. 'One (change) which is important for the work of this Royal Commission is our preparedness to challenge authority and the actions of those in power in areas where this would not previously have been contemplated,' he said. The commission he heads is charged with making recommendations for institutional reforms. It will not however determine whether people are entitled to compensation but will refer people to legal centres where they can get advice on civil and criminal actions. An investigations unit attached to the commission will also be able to refer people to police for prosecution. Not surprisingly advocates such as Broken Rites and others want institutions held accountable. Accountability will likely mean financial redress and this could open a pandora's box which could lead to changes in the legal status of some institutions. Suffice it to say the waters through which this commission has to wade will therefore be muddied by legal, political and institutional self-interest. Its progress will be long, slow and as Justice McClellan said, painful for Australia.
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.