AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By ANNETTE BLACKWELL Dec. 25, 2013
THE Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ended four months of public hearings with a sting.
On the receiving end was YMCA NSW, which had spent weeks arguing it was also the victim of a paedophile who had infiltrated the childcare provider.
The paedophile was Jonathan Lord, now 27, and in jail for six years. His victims were children aged six to 11 who attended the YMCA childcare centre at Caringbah in south Sydney in 2010 and 2011.
Parents who were told YMCA NSW was a leader in child safety, even after Lord was arrested, were also victims, the commission heard.
Up to December 20, the last sitting day for 2013, the YMCA argued that master manipulator Lord had fooled junior staff who had been trained but ignored child-safety protocols. …
Part of the commission’s work is to evaluate recommendations from at least 80 of some 300 related inquiries in Australia in the past three decades. It is also examining what has happened overseas.
The Ryan Commission in Ireland took nine years, mostly because the Catholic Church took legal action. The Australian commission has learnt a lot from Ireland.
When former prime minister Julia Gillard announced this royal commission on November 12, 2012, she said such crimes against children were ‘‘insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject’’.
The extent of the evil and the spread of institutions in which it occurs are still being revealed.
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