AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times
November 24, 2012
Robert Van Krieken
Interested parties have until Monday to comment on the terms of reference into the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Having spent time in Ireland recently reflecting on how the issue was dealt with in the Ryan, Murphy and other inquiries there, there are several problems arising from the proposed terms of reference.
It is still deeply problematic to focus entirely on sexual abuse without paying any attention to physical and emotional abuse. Everyone who works in this field knows how interlinked they are, and it’s invidious to construct a ”hierarchy of abuse”, where some kinds of harm are treated as unworthy of attention.
A second problem with the proposed terms of reference is they are almost entirely forward-looking. It will only be the testimony of witnesses that pulls the royal commission towards looking at how various institutions responded to child sexual abuse in the past.
What’s being proposed is the commission ”identify what public and private organisations and institutions should do to prevent child sexual abuse from occurring in their midst; what should be done by organisations and institutions when allegations are raised, and what can be done by the relevant institutions, organisations and government agencies to alleviate the impact of abuse that has already occurred”.
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