AUSTRALIA
Yahoo! News
AAP
KARLIS SALNA
October 9, 2014
The ability of the courts to secure justice for child sexual abuse victims may be diminishing, despite decades of law reform, the head of a royal commission says.
Justice Peter McClellan gave the warning as data covering almost 20 years showed a massive fall in the number of child sexual abuse cases that make it to court.
An analysis of police and court data from NSW suggests a steady increase in the number of incidents of child sexual assault offences reported between 1995 and 2013, including a spike following the two-year Wood Royal Commission which concluded in 1997.
But for the same period, the proportion of child sexual assaults reported to police where charges were laid declined dramatically, from around 60 per cent in 1995, to around 15 per cent in 2013.
The figures have raised concerns the trend is being replicated across other jurisdictions.
Speaking on Thursday at the International Criminal Law Congress in Melbourne, Justice McClellan said that over the past three decades there had been more than 300 inquiries which had touched upon or been concerned with the sexual abuse of children.
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