AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

KAREN HEALY THE COURIER-MAIL FEBRUARY 19, 2014

FROM the outset of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, we were told to prepare ourselves to hear survivors’ experiences of child sexual abuse.

We expected to learn about the past, we were not prepared to hear that we are still failing our children.

On Monday we heard that, within the last decade, senior staff in a primary school failed to refer allegations of child sexual abuse to the police.

Many of us were puzzled by the school’s child protection officer’s comment to the commission that she did not understand why more of the children did not have the courage to come forward.

What did Catherine Long mean? Was it that the children lacked confidence in the system? Or was the children’s lack of “courage” to blame for the horror that unfolded?