Learn from 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 that 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 and we would be naive to think that the lessons (and 400 recommendations) that are now being absorbed in Australia would not apply here equally.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established by former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard in 2012, in response to reports that had been emerging for years about the sexual abuse of children in institutions.
Over the five years since, it has heard from 16,000 people wanting to tell their stories, and interviewed half of them over the course of its 444 sitting days. 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 to police. So far there have been 230 prosecutions as a result.
The focus since the commission’s report was released late last week has been on the Catholic Church – the report made bold recommendations that the church should abolish priestly celibacy and end the secrecy of the confessional box. 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 between 10 and 14 when the abuse started, and it continued for 2.2 years on average. Nine survivors out of 10 said they had been abused by men. One-third said they had been abused by multiple perpetrators.
Victims who reported abuse were often not believed, and even sent back to the institutions where the abuse had happened.
The Australian commission has been described as a watershed in confronting the corrosive legacies of child sexual abuse. Survivors in New Zealand have repeatedly called for a similar inquiry here.
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 commission of inquiry is going to be ordered, its scope should be extended beyond state institutions to all organisations that have been charged with the care of children. That should include religious and other private organisations.
In the meantime, there are ample 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.