Call for immediate action on abuse inquiry "civil authorities across Australia are not rigorous enough around the protection of children generally, lacking consistent national standards " Francis Sullivan

AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
10 - 12- 2017

The prime minister and premiers must act now to ensure reforms recommended by the child sexual abuse royal commission are not shelved or lost in politics, a key Catholic Church adviser says.

The church's Truth Justice and Healing Council CEO Francis Sullivan has called on Malcolm Turnbull and state and territory leaders to immediately set up a COAG committee to implement the recommendations in the inquiry's final report, which will be released on Friday.

Mr Sullivan says once the report is in the public domain all participants including the Catholic Church need to implement the recommendations and it is up to Mr Turnbull to lead the way.

"I think he has to show that this report is going to be taken 100 per cent seriously, it's not going to be put in a drawer, it's not going to be just one bit's accepted and another bit's not," Mr Sullivan told AAP.

"I think the governments need to establish that COAG working party immediately on the day, then institutions and others need to step up themselves with their own implementation processes to interface with that.

"We cannot afford for this to get to get lost over the summer, to get shouted down by the political narrative that's going on."

Care Leavers Australasia Network chief executive Leonie Sheedy said all sides of politics must commit to support and implement all of the royal commission's recommendations.

"We cannot let this royal commission sit on a shelf and gather dust," she said.

"Both sides need to commit to protecting children and supporting those who have been abused in the past."

The inquiry has already called for significant reforms across the criminal and civil justice systems, where there has been some progress in setting up a national redress scheme and making it easier for abuse victims to sue for damages.

Mr Sullivan said civil authorities across Australia are not rigorous enough around the protection of children generally, lacking consistent national standards.

"Governments cannot be lax here and can't afford to be complacent because the media focus on the church and other places," he said.

Child protection advocate Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston said much has been done but the work does not end with the completion of the five-year inquiry.

"All the states and territories should do the right thing by children and adopt these recommendations, which I hope they do.

"I hope if they don't that people stop voting for the governments that don't do it, because the governments that don't implement these recommendations are governments that don't care enough about your children."

Ms Johnston said child-safe practices need to be embedded into the workplace health and safety regime.

"Every organisation, business, institution that interacts with children has a responsibility to be cognisant of the special threat posed to children in that environment."

Vindication for Ballarat survivors after report release

The Courier

 Clergy sexual abuse survivors feel they have been heard in a report deeming Ballarat’s Catholic Church culture of cover-up a catastrophic institutional failure.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was scathing in its findings of the Congregation of Christian Brothers and the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat’s responses to abuse allegations.

Survivor Paul Levey, who features in the redacted report released on Wednesday, said there was a sense of vindication in having Australia’s most powerful legal body reinforce survivors’ stories. 

Mr Levey lived at the presbytery in Mortlake after his parents separated in 1982, where he was subjected to daily sexual abuse at the hands of notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale.

“It has really put everything in black and white, what we all thought and what we all knew," he said of the report. 

“Because it was pretty bad what the (church) hierarchy did with it, covering it up.

“We’ve been saying it since the start and now we have that behind us, that’s a good thing, a really good thing.”

Mr Levey hoped the royal commission’s strong stance and scathing language would have an impact and push the church to do all it could to ensure the abuse never happened again. 

“Now that it’s (out there) like this, they’ve got to do something about it,” he said.

“Hopefully they start looking after survivors properly and knowing that it is a significant thing and it is not going to go away that easy.”

After so many years of silence, Mr Levey said being heard and believed through the royal commission had a powerful effect on survivors. 

“For some of us we were told to leave it alone, to be quiet, to move on and forget about it,” he said.

“This has allowed us to not let it bottle up inside, to get it out.

“People will look at it now and say yes it was the church’s fault, yes it was the institutions’ fault.”

Meanwhile, Ballarat survivors Gary Sculley, Tony Wardley and Paul Auchettl have said they are still waiting for the church to fully acknowledge its involvement in the abuse and the impacts.

“I think it is time to acknowledge that there has been a lot of damage done and to correct that we need to be able to come together and acknowledge the power of shame, the effects of abuse and how it lies in the families,” Mr Auchettl said.

“It was the mums that absorbed all the pain, the sisters, then in the future the wives and the daughters. 

“This is where the real pain of sexual abuse lies, in those that absorb it at home.”

Survivor Andrew Collins echoed these sentiments.

“You've got all these people who have been abused and that ripple effect goes on throughout the community,” he said.

Testimonies help hold church to account

The courage of survivors to give their horrific testimonies has been crucial in enabling the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to hold Ballarat’s Catholic Church authorities to account. 

Ballarat’s Centre Against Sexual Assault operational director Shireen Gunn said for a lot of survivors it had been important to come forward, have their story heard and feel supported. 

While in doing so, the Catholic Church had been scrutinised in a way that had not been possible in the past. 

“While they’re all individual stories and horrendous stories, they repeat a lot of the same things over and over again,” she said.

“About the abuse, how they were not heard and it was covered up, and how the offenders were untouchable at that time and moved around from place to place.” 

Having listened to evidence when the royal commission sat in Ballarat, Ms Gunn said she was not surprised by the strong language expressed in the commission’s latest report. 

“This brings it all to a finish, to a point, and I think it is really important for it to be all described in the one report,” she said.

“We just think it’s really good that it has been put out there for the public to read and for it to go down in history, so that it is never repeated and we can learn from this.”

Ms Gunn said the people seeking support from Ballarat’s CASA reflected the same picture the royal commission had depicted of who had been victims of abuse. 

“It is a high number of males coming forward, between 40 to 60 (years old), who are survivors of institutional abuse and a very high number of those are from the Catholic Church,” she said.

To contact CASA call 5320 3933 or free call 24 hours 1800 806 292. Lifeline can be accessed on 13 11 14.