GIVEN the circumstances that led up to the creation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, it was appropriate that Newcastle’s Steve Smith was the final person to give evidence to this groundbreaking and historic investigation.
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Mr Smith first spoke publicly in 2013 about the abuse he suffered as an Anglican altar boy and has been a forceful advocate for institutional reform. Speaking to the commission on Friday afternoon, he lamented the lives that had been devastated or lost through what he described as the self-serving attitudes of Australian religious institutions.
Children needed to have the confidence that adults will look after them, Mr Smith said. But as this royal commission has repeatedly shown, that confidence has been all too often misplaced and abused.
In his closing remarks, the chair of the commission, Justice Peter McClellan, said the courage and determination of survivors had helped the public to gain a greater understanding of the impact of sexual abuse of children. He thanked those survivors who were “determined to give evidence”, saying they had “given a voice” to the tens of thousands of children who had been abused over the years in Australian institutions.
Opening the commission’s 57th and final case study on Monday, Justice McClellan said there was evidence to support allegations of child sexual abuse in more than 4000 Australian institutions. The commission had held more than 400 days of public hearings, taken evidence from more than 1200 witnesses, and served notice on various organisations to produce more than 1.2 million pages of documents. Commissioners had held private sessions with 6500 individuals, with another 2000 scheduled to have their say by the time the commission hands in its final report on December 15.
Once the report is in, Justice McClellan says community focus must be two-fold: survivors must have “effective redress” and institutions must be regulated and changed with the aim of ensuring that “no child is abused in an institutional context in the future”. While that may seem a forlorn hope – given recent history – it must this society’s non-negotiable stance. In Steve Smith’s words, there must be “zero tolerance” when it comes to child abuse. As adults, we are all equally responsible when it comes to the safety of children.
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