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AUSTRALIA HAS OPENED a national probe into child sex abuse, with premier Julia Gillard warning of “uncomfortable truths” as institutions including schools and churches come under scrutiny.
Gillard ordered the inquiry in November after a decade of growing pressure to investigate widespread allegations of paedophilia, two months after the Catholic Church in Victoria revealed hundreds of children had been abused.
“This is an important moral moment for our nation,” Gillard told ABC radio as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse began at the Victoria County Court in Melbourne.
“When I established this royal commission I understood that it was going to require our whole country to stare some very uncomfortable truths in the face,” the prime minister said.
Chairman Justice Peter McClellan announced at the opening that the inquiry would hear “serious and shocking allegations”.
At least 5,000 people want to tell their stories
At least 5,000 people would want to tell their stories, although “the number could be much higher”, he said. Public hearings are not likely to start for several months.
“Part of the task given to us… is to bear witness, on behalf of the nation, to the abuse and consequential trauma inflicted on many people who have suffered sexual abuse as children,” he said.
“For the individuals who have been traumatised, giving an account of their experiences and telling their story can be an important part of the recovery process.”
An interim report is due by June 2014 but McClellan admitted it was unlikely the commission could complete its work within the timeframe for the delivery of a final report in June 2015. Findings and recommendations will be made public.
Gillard outlined two goals for the inquiry.
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“For the survivors of child sexual abuse, I want this to be a moment of healing, for us to say to them as a nation ‘we hear you, you’re valued and you’re believed’ because for too long, so many of these survivors have just run into closed doors and closed minds.”
“And second, I want the royal commission to provide for us recommendations about the future.
“We’ve let children down in the past as a country. We need to learn what we can do as a nation to better protect our children in the future.”
Understanding the response of an institution to an allegation of abuse
Counsel Gail Furness told the inquiry that orphanages, schools, churches, parishes, groups such as the scouts, organised sports, childcare centres, detention centres and the defence forces would all come under scrutiny.
But she added: “The royal commission is not a court and does not decide criminal cases.”
The inquiry would be conducted to understand the response of an institution to an allegation of abuse.
Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric apologised at Christmas to those who “suffered at the hands” of priests and religious teachers.
Sydney Archbishop George Pell said he was ashamed following a series of paedophile allegations against priests and claims they were hushed up.
The government in Victoria state is running its own investigation into sex abuse, with the Church telling a state parliamentary hearing in September that about 620 children had been abused since the 1930s.
There is also a special commission of inquiry in neighbouring New South Wales into similar allegations raised in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney.
Child sex abuse allegations have rattled the Catholic Church across the world, particularly in Ireland but also in the United States, Germany and Belgium.
I was in Australia in an internet cafe and a guy next to me was looking at child porn! I walked out and called the cops. I was told after by the guy working in the cafe that after i left they were there within 5 minutes in plain clothes and sat down where i was and caught him red handed. When the cops called around for me to make a statement she told me he was a SWIMMING COACH for kids. I felt sick!. He got jail so im very happpy about that. Child abuse is around a lot more than we think. We just have to be protective and aware of our children. I think warning kids at a young age is important too as bas*ar*s that abuse children take advantage of thier innocence.
Well done Jimmy. A lot of people may have just walked away and not got involved. Which is how a lot of these problems went on for so long. Thanks for taking the initiative to do something.
Cheers guys! I must say even now when i think about it im so glad i called the cops & well done to them too for acting so quickly. I’m sure you all would have done the same
Abuse of power happens anywhere that power is absolute.
Societies around the world gave this unquestioned respect and absolute power to clergy on faith. Without that faith these organisations would have been subject to the same checks, balances and scrutiny as secular institutions.
Faith and the unearned respect we’re all told we have to give to religion is to blame.
We always hear the excuse ‘it happens everywhere’ (as if that makes it okay) and ‘the % of priests is very small’,it’s very small because of cover-ups and people only coming forward now,wait until we hear the full-scale of what’s happened in Africa,the Philippines and South America. How people can go to mass and uncomfortably deny these horrors is beyond me
the government and state failed me, i wasn’t born in 1930′s i was born in 1971, i am a survivor of violent child sex abuse, and much more, nobody bother from the states in Ireland to check it out, social workers failed me, i never seen one when i resided in a residential home, the difference was that i had every story in black and whit on my files, of F.O.A information, but nobody cared, i had a horrific childhood, but i am still alive to tell the tale, no it was not a priest, but nuns who almost destroyed my life, they send me off to psyche therapy to a psychiatric children’s unit to shut me up from telling the world, in spite of it all, i was one strong 5 year old when the abuse first started, beaten with a bamboo cane, stripped naked in a tower- room, which was a clothing storage room, raped 39 times, a bar of soap shoved in my mouth if i tried to tell a nun about the abuse, put into a cold bath, locked in the bathroom, no clothes, only a dirty pile of linen in a basket, i could go on, trial vaccine child abuse, still nobody has listen to my side of the story, redress didn’t listen, shove you a few thousand and be off with you now, i blame the state government, health board, and authorities, i hate the stinking lot,
I always said the perpetrators will never break my spirit, or silence me.
I am a true survivor, I never go to church anymore, may they rot in hell.
The State owes me my life back, I will always have a permanent scar, and injuries that were inflicted on me by the devil lot themselves.
That’s an awfull story the church has alot to answer for,but slowly people are turning there backs on the church numbers are falling people see it for what it really is the biggest money making scam the world has ever seen
Thanks for sharing your story Rita . I believe and agree with everything you say . It’s important that all survivors are heard . People need to hear personal testimonies like yours more often. All abusers should be named and shamed .
There is a film of interest of British children being transferred to Australia boarding schools run by the evil Catholic Church. It’s called “Oranges and Sunshine “
Thanks for that Declan,hadn’t come across it,if people haven’t seen Mea Maxima Culpa – Silence in the House of Good and Deliver Us From Evil,both award winning docs are well worth a look
I’ve seen Deliver Us From Evil and i was so angry and shocked. When the father of the young girl is describing what was going on when they invited the priest to stay with them made me very upset. Did you know that the same priest left his phone or laptop on a plane here in Ireland and it contained lots of child pornography? I can’t think of a word to describe him, even the worst word i can think of is too good for him!
I was the same,that poor dad poured his broken heart out,and Fr Oliver O’Grady from Tipperary was full of beans when interviewed,sickening,he’s in Mountjoy now for the laptop,good enough for him
Unfortunately it is perceived down here that the net they are using is too big and not directed at specific institutions. The churches are delighted that they’re included in the commission as it means that it’s now unlikely that there will be a royal commission on abuse in religious institutions.
The terms of reference are so broad that those that carried out the vile and heinous crimes may slip under the radar.
However I have been proven wrong and hopefully will be again on this matter.
So was the church just a place to join for pedophiles so they would have access to kids.Are you born that way because you can’t just choose to like kids.
A friend of mine in his 60s living in Sydney escaped to England then onto a ship all the way to Australia It was around the late 1950s He was only 14 when he escaped and never looked back. He was pupil of a Christian brothers Catholic school and was extremely physical abused by those soldiers of the evil Catholic Church
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