Brandis Lifts Time Bar on Sex Abuse Cases

By Annette Blackwell
7 News
May 11, 2016

https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/31571231/brandis-lifts-time-bar-on-sex-abuse-cases/

Brandis lifts time bar on sex abuse cases

The federal government has scrapped time limitations on child sex abuse claims against commonwealth entities such as the Australian Defence Force.

Attorney-General George Brandis has instructed federal agencies not to use a time-barred defence of child abuse claims or to oppose an application for an extension of a limitation period in such cases.

The direction issued last week mostly impacts on child abuse survivors who were just 15 years old when they suffered horrendous mistreatment in ADF cadet academies like the HMAS Leeuwin or HMAS Nerimba.

The federal decision has led to calls for institutions like the Salvation Army, the Catholic and Anglican churches as well as all states and territories to follow suit.

Adair Donaldson, a lawyer who has acted for abuse survivors, including ADF victims, welcomed the federal legal direction.

He said it led the way for other institutions to act.

Only three states, Victoria, NSW and Western Australia have introduced legislation in line with recommendations by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and done away with time limitations on child abuse cases.

Mr Donaldson said institutions do not need to wait for state governments to amend legislation.

"They should now follow the lead of the federal government".

Mr Donaldson and other lawyers who represent child abuse survivors are still being met with the time-bar defence in all but the three states and in cases brought against the churches.

In some dioceses of the Catholic Church the statute of limitations is not argued but it has not been universally abandoned as a defence by that church.

On Wednesday Mr Donaldson said it needed to be emphasised that survivors had never asked for their claims to be simply accepted, and every institution has a right to put a claimant's case to proof and to give evidence.

"All survivors have been asking is a level playing field from which to have their claims heard."

The rejection of claims because of a time bar "has been grossly unfair and at last the Commonwealth has recognised this", he said.

The royal commission, which recommended a removal of the statute of limitations in these cases, has found that on average it takes a child abuse victim 22 years to disclose the abuse.