AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Monday 15 May 2017
The head of the royal commission into child sexual abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, has referred 2,025 incidents of abuse to authorities since 2013, provoking 127 prosecutions to date.
McClellan will share the figures at the National Council of Churches conference in Melbourne on Tuesday via a video address. He will tell the conference the volume of referrals was so great that there may be further prosecutions once they had been fully assessed by police.
The commissioners have held more than 6,700 private sessions for survivors of institutional abuse. While some survivors gave evidence during the commission’s public hearings throughout the country, many more chose to give evidence to the six commissioners in private.
To date, the commission has analysed the information from 6,302 of those private sessions, and McClellan will for the first time reveal the breakdown of institutions in which those survivors were abused.
Thirty-two per cent of survivors who attended a private session reported abuse in a government institution, while 10% reported abuse in a secular institution. Religious institutions comprised 59% of reported abuse.
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