Call for Redress As Commission Opens

Sky News
September 16, 2013

http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=906487


Victims have staked out the first public hearing of the Royal Commission into child sex abuse, demanding the institutions involved be made to pay compensation.

Leonie Sheedy of Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) says a fund needs to be set up now.

'Our people are dying,' she told AAP on Monday.

Ms Sheedy, standing in front of a line of signs held by CLAN members calling for churches and charities to be made accountable, said they were waiting to see what the commission would recommend but she feared it would come too late.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney is looking at how organisations dealt with complaints about convicted pedophile Steve 'Skip' Larkins.

He was the head of a foster care service for indigenous children up to 2011 even though the Scouts had received child sex abuse complaints about him in the 1990s.

People queued outside the commission's rooms at Governor Macquarie Tower in Sydney to attend the first hearing.

The commission will not handle matters of compensation but will refer people to legal centres for advice on civil and criminal action.

'Time is running out for these elderly care leavers and they need some dignity in their old age which they didn't receive as children in so-called care,' said Ms Sheedy, the founder and chief executive of CLAN.

In a statement she thanked chief commissioner Justice Peter McClellan for listening to stories about children in care who were locked in cupboards and stairwells and suffered horrendous abuse.

Former and current executives of Scouts Australia are witnesses at the first public hearing, where all six commissioners are hearing evidence from victims and organisations in relation to Larkins.

The witness list published by the commission includes former Scout commissioner Bill Metcalfe and former Scout leader and whistleblower Armand Hoitink, as well as other Scout notables including Alan Currie.

It also includes the chief executive of community services in the NSW Department of Family and Community Services, Maree Walk, as well as The Children's Guardian, acting commissioner for children and young people Kerryn Boland.

Monday's session will hear statements read from two victims and a mother of a victim.

The Sydney hearings could run for two weeks.