AUSTRALIA
7 News
MELBOURNE (AFP) – Australia opened a national probe into child sex abuse on Wednesday, with premier Julia Gillard warning of “uncomfortable truths” as institutions including schools and churches come under scrutiny.
Gillard ordered the inquiry in November after a decade of growing pressure to investigate widespread allegations of paedophilia, two months after the Catholic Church in Victoria revealed hundreds of children had been abused.
“This is an important moral moment for our nation,” Gillard told ABC radio as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse began at the Victorian County Court in Melbourne.
“When I established this royal commission I understood that it was going to require our whole country to stare some very uncomfortable truths in the face,” the prime minister said.
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