AUSTRALIA
Big Pond News
Thursday, September 12, 2013
The first public hearing into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse will be held in Sydney on Monday.
Stories have been gathered and parameters set, now Australia will see the behaviour of powerful institutions challenged as never before.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse holds its first public hearing in Sydney on Monday and the focus will be on how institutions, including influential church and state bodies, handled complaints that children in their care were sexually abused.
For thousands of Australians damaged for life by institutionally-protected sex offenders, the hearings represent longed-for acknowledgement and the best hope of opening the door to redress.
For advocacy group Broken Rites, which since 1993 has pressed for a Royal Commission into how churches handle child-sex crimes, the hearings are a path to justice.
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