Lessons from Australian child sex abuse report
The report of an Australian commission of inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse makes harrowing reading.
It reveals systemic abuse so pervasive and widespread the report describes it as a ‘‘national tragedy’’.
New Zealanders as well as Australians should read this report – all 17 volumes of it. Our countries are culturally similar in many ways and we would be naive to think that the lessons that are now being absorbed in Australia would not apply here equally.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established in 2012.
Over the five years since, it has heard from 16,000 people wanting to tell their stories, and interviewed half of them in person.
The inquiry has generated more than 1.2 million documents. It discovered that ‘‘countless thousands’’ of children had been sexually abused in Australian institutions.
This abuse had been going on for generations, but continues to the present day – some of those interviewed were still young enough to be attending school.
The commission referred many of the allegations it received to police. So far there have been 230 prosecutions as a result.
The focus since the commission’s report was released has been on the Catholic Church. Sixty-two per cent of those abused in religious institutions were Catholic.
However, the abuse occurred in more than 4000 institutions overall, not just religious organisations but sports and recreation clubs, schools, care facilities, youth detention, supported accommodation, health services and the armed forces.
More than two-thirds of the abuse victims were male. More than half were aged between 10 and 14 years when the abuse started. Nine survivors out of 10 said they had been abused by men. Victims who reported abuse were often not believed, and even were sent back to the institutions where the abuse happened.
The Labour Party pledged a royal inquiry into abuse in state care before the election and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has since confirmed that the new government is working towards it.
If a full inquiry is going to be ordered, its scope should be extended beyond state institutions to all organisations which have been charged with the care of children.
In the meantime, there are lessons to be learned from the Australian commission’s report.
They include the sad conclusion that systemic abuse is likely to have been more widespread and pervasive than we would like to believe, and that victims – even those reporting abuse decades after it occurred – have a right to be listened to and treated seriously.