Opinion: Sex Abuse Probe Will Reveal Further Failings

By Annette Blackwell
The Newcastle Herald
December 25, 2013

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1992007/opinion-sex-abuse-probe-will-reveal-further-failings/?cs=391

SURVIVORS: Eyvette Parr and Trish Charter, survivors of institutional abuse, comfort each other outside the Royal Commission in Sydney.

THE Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ended four months of public hearings with a sting.

On the receiving end was YMCA NSW, which had spent weeks arguing it was also the victim of a paedophile who had infiltrated the childcare provider.

 

The paedophile was Jonathan Lord, now 27, and in jail for six years. His victims were children aged six to 11 who attended the YMCA childcare centre at Caringbah in south Sydney in 2010 and 2011.

Parents who were told YMCA NSW was a leader in child safety, even after Lord was arrested, were also victims, the commission heard.

Up to December 20, the last sitting day for 2013, the YMCA argued that master manipulator Lord had fooled junior staff who had been trained but ignored child-safety protocols.

This argument was torn apart when Gail Furness, senior counsel advising the commission, delivered a damning indictment of the association based on evidence so far.

She said YMCA NSW was not child-safe when Lord worked there and may never be while current senior management, chief executive Philip Hare, and children’s services manager Liam Whitley, continue in their jobs. Ms Furness queried whether they were fit and proper to lead an organisation where the protection of children was paramount.

What happened with the YMCA is just a taste of what is to come.

Others can expect to be stung just as hard when the commission delivers its interim report in June. Further findings on the YMCA and two other case studies are likely.

Scouts Australia, the NSW Department of Community Services and the Children’s Guardian all had roles to play when it came to paedophile Steve Larkins taking charge of Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Services (HACS) in 2000.

Scouts apparently knew of his activities in the early 1990s.

The mid-year report will probably have something to say about HACS.

Those involved in mishandling complaints by people who were horribly abused at an Anglican orphanage, the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore, can also expect a serve.

The report will name and shame, and may recommend charges.

Up to 60 matters have already been referred to police by the commission. These arise from private hearings  held throughout the country.

Yet, all of this work is only the tip of a very big iceberg.

Part of the commission’s  work is to evaluate recommendations from at least 80 of some 300 related inquiries in Australia in the past three decades. It is also examining what has happened overseas.

The Ryan Commission in Ireland took nine years, mostly because the Catholic Church took legal action. The Australian commission has learnt a lot from Ireland.

When former prime minister Julia Gillard announced this royal commission on November 12, 2012, she said such crimes against children were ‘‘insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject’’.

The extent of the evil and the spread of institutions in which it occurs are still being revealed.

Chief commissioner Justice Peter McClellan speaks often of the inquiry’s role in bearing witness so it can fulfil Ms Gillard’s promise to victims: ‘‘Even if you felt for all of your life that no one’s listened to you, that no one has taken you seriously, that no one has really cared, the royal commission is an opportunity for your voice to be heard.’’

Thousands of people are coming forward to tell of sexual, psychological and physical abuse at the hands of powerful people who were supposed to care for them.

From April 2013, when its phone lines opened, to the beginning of November, the commission had received 6362 phone calls and 2775 written and email inquiries.

By the time it rose in December, 1000 private sessions had been held throughout the country and calls were still coming in at 22 a day.

About half of abuse victims who contact the commission tell their stories at a private hearing. Case studies for public hearings are built from information in sessions.

The historic nature of the abuse brings with it legal and other problems.

The Catholic Church developed its own process to deal with a tsunami of allegations, the Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, told the commission during a December hearing into the church’s Towards Healing program.

That hearing, which resumes on January 22, is the first of many that will examine the Catholic Church and its agents.

The commission is required to make a final report by the end of 2015 and is expected to recommend changes in laws, policies, practices and systems to better protect children from sexual abuse.

In early December it released a paper outlining its approach to examining justice for victims.

 

There might be scope for redress such as financial compensation. It was here that skirmishes were revealed in the Anglican and Catholic churches. 

When wealthy institutions have a lot to lose, expect full-scale legal wars if the commission makes a recommendation that forces the opening of coffers.