AUSTRALIA
The Conversation
Olivia Monaghan
PhD student in the School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Melbourne
Twelve months ago, I wrote an article encouraging inquiries into child sex abuse to treat the church like a corrupt police force. Today, the first of the nation’s inquiries to child sex abuse, run by the Victorian government’s Family and Community Development Committee, released its recommendations, and they have done just that.
This inquiry was established prior to the national Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. As such, it focuses on child sex abuse in Victorian non-government organisations. Above all else, the findings and recommendations of the inquiry suggest a government-initiated response to child sex abuse in any part of Australia is long overdue.
As the committee acknowledges, the extent of abuse at the hand of non-government actors (especially in religious organisations) is difficult to measure. However, it reasonably estimates that:
…there have been several thousand victims criminally abused in non-government organisations in Victoria alone.
The nature of the organisations investigated by the inquiry prevents the true extent of the crime from being known. For example, the inquiry found that victims were often deterred or actively discouraged from making allegations of abuse against members of the Catholic Church because of the esteem held by the church and its employees within the community.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.