AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
July 15, 2015
Jane Lee
Legal affairs, industrial relations and science correspondent
Churches, schools and hospitals could be held criminally liable for child sexual abuse perpetrated by people linked to them, according to a report before a royal commission.
The president of the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, flagged on Wednesday that the commission was considering a report which discusses whether an institution should be held criminally liable “for the sexual abuse committed by a person associated with that institution.”
It is a crime in Victoria for certain responsible people to negligently fail to reduce or remove the risk children will be abused by others in an organisation.
“One of the key aims of the … offence was the promotion of cultural change in the way in which organisations who care for and supervise children deal with the risk of child sexual abuse,” Justice McClellan said.
“This aim could be further pursued by having the offence apply to the institution itself,” he told an assembly of the Uniting Church of Australia in Perth.
Instead of imprisonment or fines, “which … may have unwarranted and deleterious effects on non-profit organisations”, probation orders could prevent people from certain types of conduct for a period of time, he said, citing the report by criminologists Professor Arie Freiberg and Karen Gelb and NSW Judicial Commission member Hugh Donnelly.
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