Paltry Payouts to Child Sex Abuse Victims

News.com.au
October 7, 2013

http://www.news.com.au/national-news/nsw-act/paltry-payouts-to-child-sex-abuse-victims/story-fnii5s3x-1226734359222

CHILD sex abuse victims are being sent away with paltry settlement payments because the law is protecting the institutions like churches, lawyers say.

The royal commission into institutionalised responses to child sex abuse is being urged to get tough on the state-based statute of limitation laws that give victims just three years to lodge a claim in court.

"When they molested the child they took away their human rights. When as an adult the victim tries to take action, then they take away their legal rights," lawyer Jason Parkinson said.

The commission has been told in submissions about one case where up to $22,000 each in "compassionate" payments were made to 41 victims who as children had been abused at the notorious Anglican-run North Coast Children's home in Lismore.

However one victim from the home who sued in the courts and made it clear he would challenge the statute of limitation laws recently received a confidential settlement believed to be around 10 times that amount.

In most cases, it has taken years for these people to speak up about the shocking abuse they suffered as children and lawyer Jason Parkinson said the institutions had taken advantage of that.

"The statute of limitations protects the abusers and the rapists,'' Mr Parkinson said.

By the time they felt strong enough to sue their abusers, these people are blocked by the laws.

Since 1990, the time to bring an action for personal injury was cut from six years to three and while there are special provisions in exceptional cases, a maximum limit of 12 years applies from the time when the act or omission causing the injury occurred.

"Nobody ever thought of sexual abuse when they drew up the statute of limitation laws," Mr Parkinson said.

"They were looking at stopping people suing years after car accidents."

The royal commission is specifically looking at statute of limitation laws. In some American states, the government has created "window legislation" of two or three years for child sex abuse victims to bring civil claims even if they happened outside the limitation time.

The royal commission has already demanded that Scouts Australia reveal details of compensation paid to victims through their insurance arrangements under public liability insurance.

Lawyer Carmine Santone said a lot of victims of sexual and physical abuse as children in institutions suffered horrific psychological injuries and there was a legal argument that they could not manage their own affairs and make any decision to seek justice within the limitation period.

It is a problem the commission will grapple with as it moves into its third lot of public hearings in November when it will be concentrating on the scandal of the North Coast Children's Home, which ran from the 1940s to the 1980s.

It will examine the handling of complaints and civil litigation by the Anglican Diocese of Grafton in 2006 and 2007 concerning child sexual abuse at the home.

The country's top Anglican, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, in May sent the royal commission an internal church review of the scandal just days after the resignation of Bishop Keith Slater, the head of the Grafton Diocese, who resigned after being spoken to by the Archbishop.

The church has also been asked to hand over all documents into the treatment of victims at the home - many of them orphans - who had been told by Bishop Slater that the church did not agree that the home was a church-run facility.

A spokeswoman for NSW Attorney-General Greg Smith said they would be considering any recommendations made by the royal commission regarding limitation laws.

"We expect the Royal Commission to examine this issue in some detail and we will be carefully watching it as the commission's hearings progress," the spokeswoman said.

The commission's next public hearings into the sexual abuse of children by Jonathan Lord at the YMCA begin on October 21. The hearings into the North Coast Children's home begin on November 18.