Traumatic, costly, complex, shocking: bring it on

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Stuart Rintoul
From:The Australian
April 04, 2013

“THE task we have is large, the issues are complex,” royal commissioner Peter McClellan said, after setting out the magnitude of the inquiry into child-sex abuse.

The first hearing day was brief, a first step towards a dark and ominous mountain. It heard no evidence and none will be heard until the last quarter of the year at least, although Justice McClellan revealed that the cost of the commission was already at $22 million and notices had been served on “particular bodies within the Catholic Church in Australia and its insurer, the Salvation Army and the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, seeking the production of documents”.

Justice McClellan and senior counsel assisting the inquiry Gail Furness warned repeatedly that evidence given to the commission would be traumatic, but victims’ advocates left the Victorian County Court grimly satisfied with what they had heard.

Broken Rites researcher Wayne Chamley, who had pressed for a royal commission for 15 years as the organisation pursued pedophile priests who were in many cases shielded by the church, was feeling “rapt”.

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