AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Jean Kennedy
In informal hearing rooms set up by the child sex abuse royal commission, victims are telling their stories of abuse in private.
Around 1,500 people nationwide have so far spoken about what happened to them. More than 1,000 others are on a ballooning waiting list, which grows by an extra 40 people each week.
Some are in their 80s and 90s, and many have carried their secrets for a lifetime. Their stories are not treated as legal evidence, their claims are not tested – as in a court of law. But they are believed and their trauma acknowledged.
So far out of the royal commission’s private hearings 156 cases have been referred to the police for investigation.
But lawyers say despite government and institutional apologies for the so-called sins of the past, the abuse of children in care is not confined to the past, it is still happening.
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