NEWCASTLE (AUSTRALIA)
Newcastle Herald
October 18, 2018
By Joanne McCarthy
NSW Parliament has abolished the “vile and unjust” legal defence that allowed the Catholic Church to hide behind property trusts and deny child sexual abuse survivors fair compensation.
The abolition of the “Ellis Defence”, named after the survivor who tried to sue the Sydney Archdiocese and lost because there was no entity to sue, ends more than a decade of survivors accepting settlements after advice they would not win in court while the defence was available to the church.
Greens MP and justice spokesperson David Shoebridge, a barrister who played a key role in the 2012 campaign for a child sexual abuse royal commission, welcomed the legislative reform which was passed in the NSW Parliament late on Wednesday night, but said it should have happened years earlier.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.