AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
WHEN the chairman of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, thanked the Newcastle Herald for its reporting of crimes against children, he was recognising the bravery of those whose determination to step forward has allowed the Herald to campaign as it has.
Although we like to believe that the truth will always find a way to emerge, and that good will eventually triumph over evil, history shows that this is not necessarily the case.
Not all perpetrators are caught. Not all bad deeds are punished. Not all victims or survivors are properly recompensed for the pain and suffering inflicted on them. But thanks to this Royal Commission, the spotlight has been shone like never before on the perpetrators of these heinous crimes, and, just as importantly, on those who have protected them.
It will be three years this week since the commission held its first public hearing. Although conducted in Sydney, it, too, related to events in the Hunter Region, examining the response of various agencies to a former head of the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Services, Stephen Larkin, who was prosecuted in 2012 for offences committed some 15 years earlier.
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