AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
At this time of year we proudly, rightly, celebrate Australia and its achievements. But we acknowledge that success has not come without cost, and that we are not always – and in many aspects – as we would wish to be.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse is laying bare a side of society that many would prefer not to know about. In some of the institutions entrusted to protect them, our children have suffered prolonged sexual abuse. A hideous secret has been covered up.
The commission has marked its first birthday with what is becoming a characteristic blizzard of numbers. Thousands of phone calls and letters from victims, hundreds of meetings held around the country, hundreds of submissions received, hundreds of notices served on institutions to produce documents.
Its schedule of activity for this year is no less exhausting. This week it concludes hearings into the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing protocol for handling sex abuse complaints. Next week it starts hearings to investigate how the Salvation Army responded to abuse claims in four of its homes: Bexley and Goulburn in NSW and Indooroopilly and Riverview in Queensland.
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