AUSTRALIA
7 News
ABC
BY CANDICE MARCUS
August 20, 2014
A woman whose son was sexually abused by a paedophile school bus driver in Adelaide more than two decades ago says she wants a national organisation set up to monitor child institutions.
Convicted paedophile Brian Perkins abused children while he was employed without a background check as a bus driver for the St Ann’s special school in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Helen Gitsham’s son was abused by Perkins and, in a written submission to a federal royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, said the Catholic Church’s response was inadequate.
She said a Catholic Church inquiry that was announced in 2002 was not independent, transparent or comprehensive, and the process had not been scrutinised by anyone other than those associated with the church itself.
“From the very beginning of the inquiry the intention of the Catholic Church was to seek advice on legal matters and liability, not to determine whether the school tried to identify children who may have been abused, nor how families and children were affected and followed up at the time and since,” Mrs Gitsham said.
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.