Survivors Are Finally Being Listened To. the Commission on Child Abuse Is Doing a Great Job

By Helen Davidson
The Guardian
August 29, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/29/survivors-are-finally-being-listened-to-the-commission-on-child-abuse-is-doing-a-great-job

A man outside The Commonwealth Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse at the County Court. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP

Writing in Spectator this month, Christopher Akehurst managed to pull together no facts and a lot of ignorance in Touting for abuse, an attack on the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Akehurst is quite alone with this “the royal commission is a stunt” rhetoric. No one who understands anything about the work of the commission would dare to hold that view any longer, although some did when the commission was first announced. Among the many royal commissions and inquiries currently running, this one is unique in the overwhelming support for both its purpose and its conduct.

Akehurst’s view is that the commission is a conspiratorial witch hunt out to bash the Roman Catholic church launched by former prime minister Julia Gillard as a last ditch attempt at creating a legacy. His main argument is that two years on, the commission is running out of victims and has to resort to telemarketing to find some.

There are many points in the Spectator article which can simply be answered by reading the commission’s terms of reference, and more still that I could tear apart for inaccuracy, but I want to focus on this last claim.

Akehurst writes that “there is some indication that the commission is running out of victims,” and then admits in the next sentence that he is basing this entirely on a conversation with a friend who received a phone call polling about (probably) awareness of the commission. Over several paragraphs, this phone call is used as a clunky literary device to damn the commission’s reason of being.

In fact, the royal commission has already heard from more than 3,300 victims of abuse and with 40 requests for private sessions coming into the commission every week, there was still a queue of 1,000 waiting their turn as of July this year. By the end of 2015 the commission will have conducted up to 4,000 private sessions, and it needs at least another two years for the extra 3,000 private sessions expected, according to projections in the commission’s interim report.

Akehurst could very easily have found this out, instead of relying on one anecdote, although perhaps the information wasn’t around when he wrote it. Akehurst told me it was written last week, but a cache copy of an old blog - still viewable - suggests the piece was actually published in March last year. That’s likely to be an issue for the magazine’s editor who appears to have bought recycled content, wasting money on clickbait. Akehurst didn’t take up my offer to clarify.

Having actually sat in and reported on several weeks’ worth of public hearings – examining not just the Catholic Church but also the Salvation Army, the Scouts, YMCA, the NSW government departments running children’s homes and prisons, plus other institutions - I can tell you it can be relentlessly emotional.

It’s hard to stay positive about humanity while listening to witnesses tell stories of horrendous abuse at the hands of (accused, convicted or confessed) criminals who were meant to be looking after them. Harder still to hear from the colleagues and superiors who were blind to it - wilfully or otherwise - continue to downplay the abuse and alleged coverups, even as the institutions begin admitting more responsibility.

But the silver lining is that these survivors – for that is how they prefer to be called, and don’t they at least deserve that – are finally being listened to, and that’s what I draw hope from when sitting in that room. This is why there is so much support for the royal commission among survivors of abuse and their supporters - really the only people whose opinions matter here.

In fallaciously dismissing the royal commission as a political witch-hunt against a blameless church, Akehurst’s words are mirroring what the institutions he is defending did on so many occasions. It ignores the abuse and its devastating impact, silences victims and shifts the blame towards, in his words, “feminists” and other assorted lefties.

In writing this piece, I spoke with Leonie Sheedy, the co-founder of the care leavers Australia network (Clan), a support group for people who grew up in institutions. Sheedy and Clan have been a constant presence at the public hearings. Shortly before we spoke she’d been at a meeting with abuse survivors, and was ecstatic that two of them had decided to contact the royal commission.

Sheedy hadn’t read the Spectator article, and I suggested she didn’t. Instead, I asked how all the people she assisted had found their experiences with the royal commission.

“They just come out a different person.They feel believed, validated, heard, respected,” said Sheedy, who then told me of a 70 year-old woman who had been abused by nuns as a child, and who had just met with a commissioner. Sheedy told me:

“She came with a handwritten note: the truth will set you free. I told her, you need to put that on the table at the royal commission so you are faced with that. She came out of that session tired and exhausted, but she came out saying she was really thrilled.”

She teared up as she added:

“I don’t think the public really understand what it means to us to finally be believed and listened to respectfully, and that we’re not getting interrogated. People have tried to get justice for themselves, and have had to put up with the most appalling statements like ‘oh that couldn’t have happened to you.’ But two more people have decided today they want to register for the royal commission. That’s the story the public needs to hear. It’s so important.”