Royal commission advises $4.4bn scheme for sex abuse redress

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

JANUARY 30, 2015

Rick Morton
Social Affairs Reporter
Sydney

THE “ideal” redress scheme for victims of child sex abuse, which would include an estimated $4.4 billion of financial compensation, is a national scheme led by the Australian government but including all jurisdictions and non-government institutions, according to the national royal commission.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse released a consultation paper this morning which will serve as the scaffold on which it builds a redress scheme for tens of thousands of victims and will begin a hearing at 9.30am investigating the possibilities.

Although the Commission has “no fixed view” on what the financial payments should be, the paper uses minimum individual payments of $10,000 and maximums of between $100,000 and $200,000 for modelling.

“Individual experiences of inadequate or unobtainable redress should be placed in the broader context of a social failure to protect children,” the paper says.

“There was a time in Australian history when the conjunction of prevailing social attitudes to children and an unquestioning respect for authority of institutions by adults coalesced to create the high-risk environment in which thousands of children were abused.

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