AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times
November 13, 2012
Noel Towell
More than 100 Canberra men have come forward saying they were abused while at school at two Canberra Catholic colleges between the 1970s and 1990s.
Lawyers acting for the victims say the national royal commission announced by the Prime Minister on Monday was the only acceptable response to the legacy of institutional sexual abuse.
Jason Parkinson, of Porters Lawyers, has taken legal action throughout Australia against the Catholic and Presbyterian churches as well as the Salvation Army and the Church of England on behalf of victims.
He says the inquiry had to be nationwide to cope with the ”Chinese walls” erected by institutions to avoid legal responsibility. Mr Parkinson said the scale of abuse of his clients, former students at Catholic schools Marist College and Daramalan College between 1976 and 2000, had left many of the city’s young people ”terribly scarred”.
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