Class-action payment an insult, says abuse victim

AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

AMANDA BANKS AND COLLEEN EGAN The West Australian
May 1, 2014

The national law firm that represented former orphanage residents in a class action against the Christian Brothers was fighting for its commission and not for the victims, a man who was abused at Bindoon told the royal commission in Perth yesterday.

Edward Delaney told the public hearing that he had heard about the class action by Slater & Gordon and attended a meeting in Melbourne, where he was told he should sign a final offer that would give him about $3000.

“For what we went through, I felt this amount was an insult,” he said at the third day of evidence at the Perth hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Mr Delaney said he thought it was “disgusting”, but he was told it was $3000 or nothing and he signed a document. “I am sorry I signed that document,” he said.

The Perth hearing is investigating the abuse of boys at the Christian Brothers’ Bindoon, Clontarf, Castledare and Tardun homes from the 1940s to 1960s.

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