AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
8 March, 2016
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has released a consultation paper on out-of-home care today.
Royal Commission Chief Executive Officer Philip Reed said the Commission’s terms of reference direct it to examine how to better prevent, report and respond to child sexual abuse in institutional contexts.
“We decided to examine out-of-home care because it was apparent from our private sessions, public hearings and research work that children in out-of-home care are at a heightened risk of sexual abuse,” Mr Reed said.
“To date we have held over 4,700 private sessions, in which out-of-home care was the largest category of institutions identified, constituting over 40 per cent of all reports of child sexual abuse,” he said.
“We have heard numerous accounts of the significant sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children that occurred in these institutions and its detrimental impact on many people’s lives.”
Mr Reed said the Commission had heard concerns that the current out-of-home care system did not adequately protect children from sexual abuse, or consistently respond as well as it should when abuse occurs.
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