AUSTRALIA
Northern Rivers Echo
Andy Parks
15th Nov 2012
They say a week is a long time in politics.
It was only last Friday that I met up with Robbie Gambley to talk about the Blue Knot Day event he was organising to support victims of childhood sexual abuse.
That very morning on the radio I’d heard a senior NSW police detective break ranks and claim investigations into child sexual abuse were being blocked by the Catholic Church in what he called a systematic cover-up. That same day The Age newspaper in Melbourne ran a story about a ring of 15 religious brothers and an ‘alpha paedophile’ suspected of the unreported murder of two boys and the abuse of 40 more in the 1960s.
Calls for a Royal Commission have been made loudly and repeatedly over many years, and on that Friday morning as I heard the latest news reports and also listened to Robbie bravely tell The Echo his story, I never thought we’d have a Royal Commission announced within the week.
But now it’s happened and victims’ support groups all over the country are starting to feel that finally, a light may be shone into some very dark places.
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