Sex abuse victims request disability pension

AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

PETER LLOYD: In Victoria, a group of people who have been sexually abused are asking to be put on the same disability pension as returned soldiers.

The idea is coming from Ballarat, a city with a dark past of child sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy.

Kate Stowell reports from the central Victorian city.

KATE STOWELL: Abuse survivor Andrew Collins represents a group of more than 80 people from the Ballarat area.

During the course of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse and the Royal Commission, he’s become a spokesman for the local community of abuse survivors.

He says a lot of people aren’t coping.

ANDREW COLLINS: There was one survivor that we knew of who would struggle every month, did he get his medication? Did he have his mobile phone? He was suicidal so he needed his mobile phone to talk to people and you know keep in touch with the world but he also needed his medication.

He’d exhausted his so many ‘free sessions’ under the mental health plan very quickly and was just living in limbo.

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