Victims' Groups Embrace Framework for Royal Commission

By Lauren Wilson and Rick Morton
The Australian
January 12, 2013

www.theaustralian.com.au/news/victims-groups-embrace-framework-for-royal-commission/story-e6frg6n6-1226552325111

VICTIMS-RIGHTS group have roundly embraced Julia Gillard's terms of reference for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and praised the selection of the six commissioners who will spend the next three years examining the evidence.

Religious institutions also welcomed the announcement of the framework for the inquiry yesterday but noted that some issues, including whether the commission would compel Catholic priests to break the "inviolable seal of confession", remained to be resolved.

While some organisations, including the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, had called on the government to expand the terms of reference to include all forms of abuse suffered by children at the hands of institutions - not just sexual abuse - most advocacy groups conceded yesterday that the inquiry was broad enough.


Hetty Johnston, the founder of victims-advocacy group Bravehearts, said: "We are just ecstatic - there is everything in there that we hoped to see and nothing that we feared we might.