Nicky Davis

Independent Australia
November 10, 2015

https://independentaustralia.net/profile-on/nicky-davis,496

For decades Nicky Davis was one of the silent majority of clergy abuse victims who believed no one would ever face responsibility for the many crimes against her. She finally reported her abuse after the appalling treatment of Australian survivors by Pope Benedict at World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney. Nicky's perpetrator was arrested, despite the best efforts of church officials to hide the truth and she and the multiple eyewitnesses to her abuse prepared themselves for trial, until Australia's predator friendly court system denied Nicky access to justice. Thanks to one of many convenient legal loopholes, another dangerous predator with dozens of victims walked free without a trial, unsupervised and is now being hidden by the church officials who helped him evade responsibility for his thousands of child sex crimes. 

As a result, Nicky became a SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) Australialeader and a vocal advocate for justice for survivors, dedicated to ensuring sweeping law reform. Nicky was one of many who worked hard to achieve the announcement of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Recently Nicky was one of a small group of international survivors who protested the cannonisation of JPII in Rome and forced the international media to address the issue of his refusal to take action against known child sex predators. In 2014 Nicky spoke of her personal experience to the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva, during the reviews of both the Holy See and Australia, supplementing the extensive documentary evidence prepared by human rights lawyers, and finally convincing the entire Committee that the sexual violation of children is indeed a most damaging form of torture.

In 2015 Nicky was part of the Australian Royal Commission’s working group on Redress and Civil Litigation, and while many important reforms made it into the final recommendations, Nicky feels the end result is still focussed on what abusive institutions are prepared to pay and not the needs of survivors, particularly historical survivors.