AUSTRALIA
Green Left Weekly
Saturday, May 31, 2014
By Coral Wynter
The Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was set up in January last year, after decades of campaigning by victims.
Led by Justice Peter McClellan, the first public hearings began in April last year and apply only to children sexually abused up to the age of 18. It does not include physical or emotional abuse.
The Commission has so far received 11,900 calls, almost 5000 letters and emails, and has heard 1500 private sessions by victims. Any one individual story is first heard in a private session and after all the evidence is collected, a public hearing occurs as an example of the abuse that occurred in that particular institution.
From these figures, it can be seen that the sexual abuse by institutions in Australia occurred on a large scale. There are estimates that only 10% of all the victims have come forward.
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