Reality of Child Abuse Sickens

By Miranda Devine
The Telegraph
September 17, 2013

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/reality-of-child-abuse-sickens/story-fni0cwl5-1226721213527

IN the lavish corporate environment of a brand new, no-expenses-spared federal bureaucracy on the 17th floor of one of the city's most prestigious office buildings, the harsh reality of child abuse seems even more surreal.

This is the setting of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which began its first days of hearings in Sydney this week.

The clear voice of the first witness rang out in the hushed hearing room like a whipcrack from another world, in which pedophile monsters prey on helpless children while cowardice, uncertainty, or something else prevents the adults in charge from stepping in.

Witness AA told of being sexually assaulted by pedophile Scoutmaster Steven Larkins at age 12 in 1992. He suffers depression, bipolar disorder, and sexual dysfuntion as a result. Witness AC became Larkins' victim at 11, and became a hard, angry person who trusts nobody, "a shell of the person I was."

Despite complaints about Larkins' obvious pedophilic tendencies, he was allowed to continue working with children for two decades. And yet, when the law finally caught up with him, the sentence he received was laughable. He is serving 22 months' jail for possessing child pornography and falsifying a "working with children" clearance. But for the "indecent assault" on AA and AC, he received a good behaviour bond.

The leniency is so out of kilter with community expectations and so insulting to Larkins' victims, you can only shake your head at the rarefied existence of the judges who, too often, dispense such sentences.

Chief Commissioner Peter McClellan offered a glimpse of judge-world when he admitted that before this job, "I did not adequately appreciate the devastating and long-lasting effect which sexual abuse…can have on an individual's life."

At least he's honest. But wasn't it obvious?