AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Tuesday 14 July 2015
Institutions including religious organisations, schools and sporting groups must never again be allowed to silence children or fail to protect them, according to the chair of the royal commission into child sexual abuse.
“A picture is emerging for us that although sexual abuse of children is not confined in time – it is happening today – there has been a time in Australian history when the conjunction of prevailing social attitudes to children and an unquestioning respect for authority of institutions by adults coalesced to create the high-risk environment in which thousands of children were abused,” justice Peter McClellan will say when he addresses the annual meeting of the Uniting church in Perth on Wednesday.
“The societal norm that ‘children should be seen but not heard’, which prevailed for unknown decades, provided the opportunity for some adults to abuse the power which their relationship with the child gave them,” he will say.
“The power of the institution must never again be allowed to silence a child.”
Since the commission was established in 2013 to investigate child sexual abuse within Australian institutions and responses to it, 13,256 allegations of abuse and/or failure to report abuse or help those being abused had been received, McClellan will say.
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