The many obvious problems of the National Redress Scheme are outlined in public hearings, first of the Senate Committee in March 2018 here then the Joint Select Parliamentary Committee in October 2018 here.
Following the loss of his Senate seat by Committee Chaore Derryn Hinch, another Joint Select Committee was set up in 2020 with Senator Dean Smith as Chair. Their Interim Report can be viewed here.
In addition to the Joint Select Committee, an independent review is underway conducted by Robyn Kruk. Details here.
The scheme is so badly constructed, it would be best all round if it were torn up and started again.
Care Leavers have certainly made their feelings heard. CLAN members protesting at Parliament House Melbourne.
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The National Redress Offical Site will provide access to application forms, a list of participating states & territories, churches and charities, as well as news updates. Link in red:
https://www.nationalredress.gov.au
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Knowmore (knowmore)
A legal service provideing free legal advice and information to applicants as well as anyone thinking of applying. The link is in red below:
https://www.nationalredress.gov.au/support/independent-legal-support
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Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) provides support, including free counselling to all Care Leavers, not just CLAN members.
Free telephone call: 1800 008 774
Link to website (currently being reconstructed) http://www.clan.org.au
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My earlier submission to the Royal Commission on Redress
After waiting patiently for my submission to be posted on the Royal Commission’s website, and several letters asking what was causing the delay, it has finally appeared — six months after I sent it to the Commission.
In a letter of apology for what it called ‘our very lengthy delay’ the Commission’s team leader said:
Unfortunately, your submission was accidentally overlooked when work was done within my team to prepare submissions for publication on our website. I apologise for this oversight.
My lengthy submission can be read online or downloaded here.
But I stressed a number of points of principle which I hope the Commission have incorporated in its recommendations – currently sitting with the Australian Government. These are the key ones:
- The Commission’s broad definition of ‘institution’ stretches far beyond what Care Leavers normally associate with redress. Moreover, people who spent their childhood in orphanages and other abusive out-of-home ‘care’ do not normally see themselves as survivors in the same light as survivors of abuse in the world outside of children’s residential institutions. This is not to say that a child abused by a priest in the vestry or by a swimming coach in the change rooms or by a scout leader on camp did not experience insufferable harm. They obviously did, and were severely damaged by their experience; and their needs must be met. But child residents were vulnerable in a qualitatively different manner. Placed in ‘care’ precisely for their own protection and nurturing, they were totally at the mercy of the very people who were entrusted to protect them. When that trust was betrayed, they had no parents or local community to turn to. Those who fled through absconding (and there were thousands who did so) were systematically rounded up by the police and routinely returned to their abusers – with no questions asked.
- The scope of the Commission’s inquiry limited as it is to sexual abuse, if narrowly applied to recommendations for redress, is almost certainly destined to create a profound sense of injustice for those who suffer from other forms of life-defining abuse in their childhood. Sexual abuse of children is not a stand-alone crime against children in ‘care’ institutions. It is part of a cluster of abuse that vulnerable children endured. The Hon Peter McClelland was right to remark recently: “When an institution provided residential care it is common to find sexual abuse accompanied by high levels of physical abuse and exploitation of the children’s labour” (Address, October 26, 2014). He could have gone further to say that high levels of physical and psychological abuse engendered a constant fear of sexual abuse which many children witnessed as part of their institutional experience.
- There is ample documented evidence of ferocious criminal violence, humiliation, deprivation of food and schooling, forced labour and medical neglect in residential institutions. We must not lose sight of the need for redress for the immense suffering from those crimes against children simply because the public fury about sexual crimes against children pushes them off the public agenda. Some – but by no means all – who survived these other forms of abuse and neglect have already had their claims acknowledged and restitution paid through earlier redress schemes. It would be a grave injustice if a redress scheme were set up that did not extend to these other forms of abuse and neglect.
- It may well be the case that the Commission cannot satisfy all interest groups and stakeholders. I make the proposition that the Commission’s first duty – in a moral sense if not in a technical sense – is to survivors of abuse in children’s residential institutions for they were the state’s children, and of all the children the most at risk and the least likely to find support at their time of need, and since.
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Paper by Assoc. Prof. Jacqueline Wilson & Frank Golding, 10-11 November 2016: International Network on Studies of Inquiries into Child Abuse, Politics of Apology and Historical Representations of Children in Out-of home Care, Norrkoping, Sweden
‘Was it all a waste of time? The failure of the financial redress proposal by the Australian Royal Commission into the Handling of Child Sexual Abuse’,
Abstract (subject to further development)
The Australian Royal Commission’s final recommendations for a national independent redress scheme for survivors of child sexual abuse are apparently sunk: but was it all a waste of time? This paper analyses the reasons for this failure drawing on the public discourse among leading politicians at national and state/territory levels. In addition it examines the documented support for, and opposition to, the proposed scheme among churches, non-government agencies and support and advocacy groups noting shifts in attitude over time. The analysis argues that the Commission’s terms of reference—sexual abuse only and an excessively broad definition of institutions—led inevitably to a fundamental dissonance between already existing or previous redress programs which rendered the proposal overly complex and politically unacceptable despite far-reaching support from stakeholders.
However, all is not lost. This paper will show that the Commission has amassed and made public a hitherto dispersed and often secretive database, forensically identifying the gaps, inconsistencies and failures of State-based and church-based redress schemes in Australia. Moreover, its politically sensitive work has stimulated the major churches and previously recalcitrant states, particularly the two most powerful, Victoria and New South Wales, to reconsider their previous positions and it is expected that even without a national independent redress scheme, significant improvements will be instituted in coming years. One example already evident is the progressive removal of legislative barriers to civil litigation and, more important to some victims, the referral of hundreds of apparent criminal cases to the justice system. Nevertheless, there will be casualties especially among Care Leavers who suffered other forms of abuse and neglect and will continue to be denied justice and struggle to have their voices heard in the face of gale-force outrage about child sexual abuse which is entrenched as ‘the core transgression of childhood innocence’ and society’s ‘ultimate collective shame’.
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ROYAL COMMISSION(S) AND OTHER INQUIRIES
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse investigated how institutions like schools, churches, sports clubs and government organisations have responded to allegations and instances of child sexual abuse.
My written submission to the Royal Commission on the Institutional Handling of Child Sexual Abuse is available on the Royal Commission’s website here.
Key points from my submission to the Royal Commission on Child Sexual Abuse:
- A national redress scheme to which all governments, major churches and relevant non-government organisations contribute equitably is among the most important outcomes that this Royal Commission could give rise to.
- Written evidence should not be expected in every case; many cases were not reported at the time, and records have been “lost” or destroyed.
- You do not have to have been raped or sexually assaulted to have been profoundly affected by sexual activity in children’s institutions.
- There is a strong connection between sexual abuse and violence which is often underestimated. While the phenomenon of grooming is increasingly well understood, its counterpart of violence and naked abuse of power is not.
- The same fear, humiliation and intimidation that enabled abuse to take place also served as a mechanism by which information about abuse was suppressed.
- The sexualised environment of children’s Homes contributed to the high incidence of abuse.
- It would be a profound disappointment to many who were abused in institutions if a “sexual abuse” only redress scheme were introduced given that existing redress schemes in Australia and overseas have already paid compensation – as they should – for other serious forms of abuse and neglect.
To read the full submission click here
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The Royal Commission’s Final Report comprises 17 volumes and some supplementary reports.
Each volume takes up a different topic, e.g
- Volume 8 is on Recordkeeping and information sharing
- Volume 11 is on Historical residential institutions
- Volume 12 is on contemporary out-of-home care
You can look at all the volumes and other material on line at:
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/final-report
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RELATED: Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Chid Sexual Abuse. My 2012 submission can be downloaded (along with many others) here.
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In a report of an interview, the Pope acknowledged that paedophilia was common and widespread in the Catholic Church, and reportedly called the requirement for celibacy among priests ‘a problem’ for which he is ‘finding the solution’ – although the Vatican also denied that he said this. Read more.
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Report ‘”…as a good parent would…”
The Commission for Children and Young People in Victoria had just released this report subtitled Inquiry into the the adequacy of the provision of residential care services to Victorian children and young people who have been subject to sexual abuse or sexual exploitation whilst residing in residential care.
The title comes from section 173 of the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 which requires that DHS (the Department of Human Sevices–known in the trade as the Department of Human Sacrifices)
must make provision for the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual development of the child in the same was as a good parent would.
This is a variation of a clause that is found in the Victorian Social Welfare Act of 1960 (s 24). Do child welfare promises ever really change?
Promises are one thing. Treating kids well is altogether another thing. It is abundantly clear from the tragic evidence that the State of Victoria remains a very bad corporate parent. Not only are children sexually abused and exploited on a routine basis, DHS ought to have known.
More than that: the residential system houses children and adolescents in appalling conditions, where they lose contact with family and community, drop out of school, develop mental health problems, engage in substance abuse, are bullied and intimidated.
These are hardly the outcomes of a good parent. It is little wonder that when they ‘age out’ of the residential system, a high proportion of these young people join the ranks of the homeless, the unemployment queues–and worse. A good parent would hang their head in shame.
The system is totally broken and no amount of further tinkering will fix it. But don’t hold your breath…I fully expect this report will join scores of other reports on Ministerial bookshelves to be rediscovered in the decades to come when there is another moral panic with the re-discovery of child sexual abuse of children in the so-called ‘care’ of the State.
You can read the report here.
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Hi Frank, my name is Sharon Lamb, I am grand daughter of Ivo Ignatius Bibby who was in the Ballarat Orphanage from 1912 (along with his sister Thelma Bibby and Patrick Bibby). I am interested in getting a copy of the booklet produced at the re-opening of the Ballarat Orphanage war honours, and also any information on Ivo regarding the orphanage. Kind regards, Sharon
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