AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
February 8, 2018
By Louise Yaxley
Malcolm Turnbull will deliver an apology to survivors of child sexual abuse by the end of this year, and is urging states to join a redress scheme recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The Prime Minister announced to Parliament this morning that abuse survivors would be consulted to ensure they were comfortable with the way the apology process is handled.
The royal commission’s report was released late last year after a four-year inquiry, and found tens of thousands of children had been sexually abused.
It found the abuse happened in almost every type of institution, including church-run bodies, as well as schools and places run by sporting and cultural groups.
Mr Turnbull said the survivors had relived the worst moments of their lives when they gave evidence — often telling their stories for the first time — so that the abuse would “never be allowed to happen again”.
“Now that those stories have been told, now that they are on the record, we must do everything within our power to honour them,” he said.
“As a nation, we must mark this occasion in a form that reflects the wishes of survivors and affords them the dignity to which they were entitled as children, but which was denied to them by the very people who were tasked with their care,” Mr Turnbull said.
Attorney-General Christian Porter said the apology would be a milestone healing event for survivors.
“The horrific circumstances that we are now dealing with came to be because of excuses, excusing the monstrous conduct of individuals, excusing the failures and outrageous wilful blindness of institutions,” Mr Porter said.
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