AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail
[Submissions on redress and civil litigation – Royal Commission]
By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
Survivors of child sexual abuse will band together to force Australian governments to back a national compensation scheme.
The opening day of a three-day hearing into redress for thousands of people who were abused as children in institutions heard the federal government had rejected a proposal for a national scheme.
The knock-back was described as disappointing by Peter McClellan, the chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Nicky Davis, who heads up the Australian branch of the international advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, claimed the federal and state governments were telling survivors to “suffer in silence”.
Only three state governments, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania have opted to appear at the hearing. The federal government declined to attend and filed a two-and-a-half page submission with the point-blank `no’ to a national scheme.
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