AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
26 September, 2016
Survivors of institutional child sexual abuse are reminded that they must register with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse by Friday 30 September 2016 if they wish to have a private session.
Private sessions give survivors of child sexual abuse in an institution the ability to share their story directly with a Commissioner in a private setting.
The Royal Commission has now held almost 6,000 private sessions and it expects to have held more than 7000 private sessions by the time it completes its work at the end of next year.
In April this year, the Royal Commission announced it would close registrations for private sessions on 30 September due to the strong demand from survivors to share their story, which resulted in a queue of people waiting to meet with a Commissioner.
The Hon Justice Peter McClellan AM, Chair of the Royal Commission, said that unless applications were closed off well before the final report was completed, many people seeking a private session would be disappointed.
He said that it would be ‘intolerable for a survivor to be accepted for a private session only to find we could not meet with them.’
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.