AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
June 15, 2013
In its first month of private hearings in Sydney, the royal commission into child sexual abuse has referred four matters to police and been warned that child sexual abuse continues in Australian institutions.
The commission has issued formal notices to 10 different religious, educational, recreational and government bodies requiring them to provide it with documents. One such notice yielded 100,000 documents.
With private sessions expanding to Brisbane this week, and later to other cities, the commission plans to shake off its ”bland” legalistic image with promotions on radio and other media to encourage more survivors to come forward, commission chief executive Janette Dines said.
But gathering records will be a ”big problem” because some of the cases it has been told of date back as far as the 1920s, and many institutions had no record-keeping requirements in earlier times, Ms Dines said.
About 5000 people have called or written to the commission since it was announced in November. It has received 2200 phone calls since April.
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