Older Survivors of Child Sex Abuse Tread Long Hard Road in Search of Redress

By Shalailah Medhora
The Guardian
October 26, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/oct/26/older-survivors-of-child-sex-abuse-tread-long-hard-road-in-search-of-redress

The royal commission into child sex abuse has recommended the creation of a comprehensive federal redress scheme for those who have suffered abuse in an institution.

Simon Cole was nearly 40 years old when he read a newspaper article noting the conviction of the man who he alleges abused him as a child. For a decade prior, he had been slowly piecing together the effect that the childhood abuse had had on his mental health.

“I was around 30 when I really started to make the connection,” Cole, who at 52 still suffers from anxiety and insomnia, said.

For three decades, he had been carrying the burden of the abuse on his own. Reading that scoutmaster Rod Corrie, the man who he said inappropriately touched him, had been jailed for abusing other children over a 30-year period, was the circuit breaker he needed to speak out and seek help.

“Seeing that made me want to act even more,” he said.

The article prompted Cole to launch a civil case against Corrie and the scouts, which was settled out of court.

For many middle-aged and elderly survivors of childhood abuse and trauma, the road to seeking redress is a long and rocky one, littered with self-doubt and shame.

New research by Adults Surviving Child Abuse (Asca) shows an increase in the number of older Australians ringing its helpline to seek support for childhood abuse.

More than one quarter (27%) of calls in the 2014-15 financial year were from people aged 50-59. People aged 40-69 make up 70% of all calls.

The total number of calls to the helpline rose from around 4,000 in 2013-14, to 5,000 the following financial year.

The president of Asca, Cathy Kezelman, said the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse was the main catalyst for older people seeking help for the first time in their lives.

“They [people who gave evidence to the royal commission] are being heard and they are being validated and that’s encouraging others to do so,” Kezelman said. “There’s less stigma and less taboo now and that’s starting to lift the lid [on the extent of abuse].”

Cole, a director of Asca, said the royal commission was a historic opportunity to investigate past abuse.

“It’s shining a light on dark corners that would otherwise be ignored,” he said.

Cole now works as a lawyer representing survivors of abuse in civil cases. He said his clients are predominantly his age, people who were abused in the 1960s and 1970s.

“It was a period of recklessness with no child protection policies,” he said. “Paedophiles operated with impunity.”

He sought counselling for the first time at the age of 20, from a clinical psychiatrist. Subpoenaed notes from their first and only session, revealed during the civil case, show that the counsellor was dismissive of his claims of abuse, calling them “cliched”.

The assessment from that psychiatrist in 1983 was “completely negligent”, Cole argued, but was in line with the standards of the time when little was known about childhood abuse and trauma.

Kezelman said it was common for older survivors of childhood abuse to have their claims dismissed by family and friends.

“We know that it’s very, very hard to speak out,” she said. “They’re often not believed.”

She argued that different counselling principles apply in the treatment of older survivors of childhood trauma. “If you’ve held this secret for so long, for many, many years, that inability to trust would have affected your relationships through your whole life,” she said.

She wanted the government to create a federal redress scheme, as recommended by the royal commission in its final report on redress and civil litigation, released in September.

The scheme would see the formation of a centralised body that would provide every survivor of institutionalised abuse with a personalised response from their abusers if they wanted one, with monetary compensation of up to $200,000, and with ongoing counselling and psychological support for the rest of their lives.

The attorney general, George Brandis, has not ruled out a redress scheme.

“The government is carefully considering the royal commission’s recommendations and will consult with states and territories before committing to a response,” a spokesman for Brandis said.

The chief executive of Mental Health Australia, Frank Quinlan, noted that the affects of childhood abuse, particularly on older Australians, is “not widely understood by the mental health sector”.

“There is clearly a different type of support needed,” he said. “Our understanding of providing services to people needs to be broader, not narrower.”

Quinlan thinks that all frontline workers – such as welfare agencies, rehabilitation centres, housing providers and employment services – need basic training in trauma, as childhood abuse often manifests itself in a range of ways.

“That would be a great first step,” he said.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse was established in January 2013. As of 1 October, it has handled nearly 26,000 phone inquiries and has referred more than 760 cases to law enforcement authorities.

Its term has been extended and it will have until December 2017 to deliver its final report.

• Anyone in Australia who needs help relating to past abuse can call the Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse hotline on 1300 657 380. The hotline operates between 9am and 5pm seven days a week

• This article was amended on 26 October 2015, to correct Simon Cole’s date of birth.