AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
GIVEN the circumstances that led up to the creation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, it was appropriate that Newcastle’s Steve Smith was the final person to give evidence to this groundbreaking and historic investigation.
Mr Smith first spoke publicly in 2013 about the abuse he suffered as an Anglican altar boy and has been a forceful advocate for institutional reform. Speaking to the commission on Friday afternoon, he lamented the lives that had been devastated or lost through what he described as the self-serving attitudes of Australian religious institutions.
Children needed to have the confidence that adults will look after them, Mr Smith said. But as this royal commission has repeatedly shown, that confidence has been all too often misplaced and abused.
In his closing remarks, the chair of the commission, Justice Peter McClellan, said the courage and determination of survivors had helped the public to gain a greater understanding of the impact of sexual abuse of children. He thanked those survivors who were “determined to give evidence”, saying they had “given a voice” to the tens of thousands of children who had been abused over the years in Australian institutions.
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