AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
Sydney, New South Wales
Friday 17 March 2017
The Hon Justice Peter McClellan AM
Chair, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
Australian Lawyers Alliance NSW Annual State Conference
Seeking ‘justice for victims’ – Part I
Some of you may be asking why it is that the Royal Commission is considering criminal justice issues. Apart from the many issues concerning the nature, cause and impact of sexual abuse and the response of institutions, our Terms of Reference require us to inquire into:
what institutions and governments should do to address, or alleviate the impact of, past and future sexual abuse and related matters in institutional contexts, including, in particular, in ensuring justice for victims through … processes for referral for investigation and prosecution ….[1]
When asking the Commission to look at criminal justice the executive would have had in mind anecdotal accounts of the problems faced by complainants in sexual assault trials. We have all heard about or experienced them. We now have some statistics which confirm the difficulties faced by sexual assault complainants. I will come to those later. The question they raise is why do the outcomes for sexual assault differ so markedly from the outcomes for other crimes?
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