AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

July 15, 2015

Jane Lee
Legal affairs, industrial relations and science correspondent

Churches, schools and hospitals could be held criminally liable for child sexual abuse perpetrated by people linked to them, according to a report before a royal commission.

The president of the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, flagged on Wednesday that the commission was considering a report which discusses whether an institution should be held criminally liable “for the sexual abuse committed by a person associated with that institution.”

It is a crime in Victoria for certain responsible people to negligently fail to reduce or remove the risk children will be abused by others in an organisation.

“One of the key aims of the … offence was the promotion of cultural change in the way in which organisations who care for and supervise children deal with…