AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail
EDITORIAL: Brisbane Royal commission hearings into child sex abuse set to bring yet more disturbing stories
THE royal commission into child sex abuse began its hearings in Brisbane yesterday with one certainty – that we will hear yet more disturbing stories of dreadful abuse and institutional failing in dealing with both innocent victims and perpetrators of these horrendous crimes.
Since the commission began public sittings in April last year, it has revealed a problem that was even more distressing and widespread than any modern society could have imagined possible.
Before the commission started its work it had been a lazy tradition, in some circles, to regard institutionalised child abuse as a particularly Catholic problem, somehow tangled up with priestly vows of abstinence and a secretive church hierarchy more interested in protecting its own than practising the Christian charity it preached.
But the testimonies presented thus far to the commission show that abuse of children in institutions is an insidious vileness that can fester and grow wherever adults of a particular inclination have control over the young, even when purportedly there are systems in place to stop exactly this sort of exploitation.
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