AUSTRALIA
The Age
April 15, 2013
Nicky Davis
The inquiry on child abuse must be survivor-driven as the victims relive their pain.
When the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse sat for the first time recently, there were smiles among those who had long campaigned for justice for Australia’s forgotten children.
But for the survivors it was not a day for smiling. We did smile, briefly, when the royal commission was announced. Pure joy as truth won an unwinnable battle against evil and corruption. But we haven’t won the war yet. Not by a long way.
We have dark days ahead, unlike those who struggled with us to get us here. Their job is done and they can leave the task of exposing the truth in the hands of the professionals. And on the shoulders of the survivors.
We must peel away our protective coping strategies and speak the words we have been ordered never to say. Try to find voices that have shrivelled to a croak after a lifetime of being silenced. Risk being overwhelmed by emotions we have buried all our lives. And pick ourselves up again after we open this Pandora’s box of undeserved guilt, shame, worthlessness and betrayal.
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