Royal Commission hearings start in Adelaide

ABC News
March 16, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-17/royal-commission-hearings-start-in-adelaide/5324728?section=sa

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is sitting in Adelaide for the first time to investigate how the Catholic Church and South Australia Police handled the case of paedophile Brian Perkins who abused about 30 intellectually disabled children at St Ann's Special School in the early 1990s. A lawyer acting for several of the families says the Church must explain why it failed to alert most of the families to the abuse and the police must justify why it took them nearly a decade to bring Perkins to justice

Transcript

CHRIS ULHMANN: This week, for the first time the Catholic Church will be asked to explain publicly why it failed to tell more than 20 families that their children may have been abused by a paedophile bus driver at St Ann's Special School in Adelaide in the early 1990s.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is about to hold its first hearings in Adelaide and it's not just the church that will face uncomfortable questions.

Samantha Donovan reports.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: In the early 1990s about 30 families began to notice dramatic changes in the behaviour of their sons who were attending the Catholic Church's St Ann's Special School in Adelaide.

Lawyer Peter Humphries.

PETER HUMPHRIES: Going from a child who was notwithstanding a disability, friendly and socialised, to someone who became very introspective, sexually aggressive, molesting immediate family members: step mothers, sisters and behaving very, very inappropriately in public and they were told in each case, no, the school had no knowledge of anything that might've accounted for that.