AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
Wednesday 15 July
The Hon Justice Peter McClellan AM
Chair, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
I speak to you today as the Royal Commission enters the second half of its five year term. As you are probably aware the Commission was originally tasked to finish at the end of this year. However, the many and complex issues that we are required to examine led the Commissioners to ask the government for a further two years to complete our work. The Commission will now conclude at the end of 2017. I have told the government that there will definitely be no request for a further extension.
Our terms of reference provide us with two fundamental objectives: to expose what has happened in the past and to make recommendations aimed at ensuring, so far as possible, that children are not sexually abused in an institutional context in the future.
As with any Royal Commission a significant part of our work is done through public hearings. A public hearing will be preceded by intensive investigation and research. Although it may only occupy a limited number of days of hearing time, the preparatory work which must be completed by Royal Commission staff and by parties with an interest in the public hearing can be very significant.
The Royal Commission is aware that sexual abuse of children has occurred in many institutions, all of which could be investigated in a public hearing. However, if we were to attempt that task, a great many more resources would need to be applied over an indeterminate, but lengthy, period of time. For this reason the Commissioners have accepted criteria by which appropriate matters are brought forward to a public hearing as individual ‘case studies’.
The decision to conduct a case study is informed by whether or not the hearing will advance an understanding of systemic issues and provide an opportunity for institutions to learn from previous mistakes. We must ensure that any findings and recommendations for future change that the Royal Commission makes have a secure foundation. In some cases the relevance of the lessons to be learned will be confined to the institution the subject of the hearing. However, in most cases they will have relevance to many similar institutions in different parts of Australia.
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