AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
July 11, 201
Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter
Paedophiles who target children with disabilities escape punishment because authorities view the victims as incompetent or unreliable, a royal commission has heard.
A woman whose teenage daughter allegedly suffered a horrific assault at a school for children with intellectual disabilities in Sydney’s south west told a public inquiry the case was never investigated properly and the suspect remains a free man.
The woman, given the pseudonym CIC, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse her then 14-year-old daughter was allegedly raped by a staff member at the Mater Dei School in Camden in 1991 but her complaints went nowhere.
“It is so easy for people in positions of trust to abuse children under their care because they know a disabled child may not be able to communicate and report their abuse as easily as others can,” she said.
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