Royal Commission begins with warning about workload

AUSTRALIA
ABC – The World Today

ELEANOR HALL: Let’s go now to Melbourne, where the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse has opened this morning. The hearing began with a warning about the size of the Commission’s workload and a prediction that it won’t meet its reporting deadline.

The chairman, Justice Peter McClellan, said he expects many thousands of witnesses to give evidence about suffering sexual abuse in institutions.

Simon Lauder was at the County Court in Melbourne as the inquiry began and he joins us now.

Simon, the Commissioner is clearly indicating that he has a very large task. Just how wide-ranging is this inquiry?

SIMON LAUDER: It’s possibly Australia’s most wide-ranging Royal Commission ever. The name says it all really, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. So that’s anyone under the age of 18 whose been, who was abused in any institution, be it private or government run and that can be a sporting institution, an educational one.

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