Australia: Royal Commission into Paedophilia announced

Today's abuse victims must be kept in focus

Miranda Devine 
The Daily Telegraph
November 14, 2012 12:00AM

IT'S hard to separate the royal commission into child sexual abuse from politics and anti-Catholic agendas, in the fetid atmosphere that currently exists in Canberra.

The prime minister at least appears genuine in her decision to set up the inquiry, after serious allegations of paedophilia and cover-ups in the Catholic Church in NSW and Victoria.

She has broadened the inquiry, as she should, to include other institutions where children may have been abused, both religious and state-run, as well as the police, giving it much the same remit as the 1995 Wood Royal Commission into the NSW police service.

The Wood inquiry was a horrendous eye-opener.

In the associated successful trials of predatory paedophiles Dolly Dunn, a teacher at a Catholic school, and businessman Phillip Bell, prosecutor Margaret Cunneen insisted the worst details be made public. A video of Dunn sitting on the edge of a bed, undressing a little boy of about eight, is seared into my memory.

Cunneen wanted people to know what paedophiles are capable of, because in the past they have been protected by our refusal to believe anyone is capable of such depravity, especially men who seem on the surface so normal.

But paedophiles like Dunn and Bell inveigle their way into institutions and families with charm and trickery. Their aim in life is to have sex with children and fool everyone.

That is why institutions like the church were perfect covers, and it is to those institutions' eternal shame they didn't realise they were being used.

But since the Wood Royal Commission, and the Catholic Church's Towards Healing program, there has been significant reform, which led to a flood of historic cases coming before the courts in recent years.

In his report, Justice Wood praised the response of the Catholic Church, describing its response as a "model" for others. "While a good deal of evidence and assistance was provided by the Catholic Church, it 

is not the case that the Commission finds particular fault with that church or its constituent bodies. Indeed, the response to the matters disclosed to the Commission is held up as a model for other churches and religious organisations to follow."

Cardinal George Pell set up the process which has been so lauded in 1996, in which complainants are told to go to the police to report any criminal abuse and which uses independent experts to investigate complaints.

He can defend himself, but I will point out that the attempts to hound him to resign resemble a witch hunt.

For instance, last month he was smeared at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Alleged Criminal Abuse of Children by Religious and Other Organisations.

It was claimed to the inquiry that in 1969 in Ballarat, a boy complained of being raped by a brother and Pell refused to see him. Pell rejected the allegations as false.

He was lucky he had records and could prove he was out of the country, studying in Rome and Oxford from 1966 to 1971.

But the defamation remains. Those accusations remained yesterday on the ABC website, and elsewhere, almost four weeks after they were made, with no correction.

In such an atmosphere, a royal commission may be the best way of clearing the air and discovering if there still is abuse and institutional cover-up of abuse, and to ensure victims are helped, the vulnerable 

protected and the guilty punished.

But some police officers working in child protection are concerned that focusing on historical abuse will divert resources away from children in need today.

"We can't investigate kids being raped two weeks ago properly," said one officer.

NSW Police should be commended for the effort it is putting into investigating historical cases of child abuse, but there are questions over whether enough is being done for crimes that are occurring today.

For instance, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics found in 2010 there were 4886 sexual offence incidents involving children that were reported to police. Criminal proceedings were commenced in 590 cases.

In other words, just 12 per cent of reported cases of child sexual abuse end up with an offender being charged.

The NSW Ombudsman is understood to be working on a report on the NSW police handling of child sex cases.

There are understood to be thousands of cases when police have not charged a perpetrator because the child victim did not want to commence proceedings.

Unlike in domestic violence cases, where police are compelled to press charges even if the victim is unwilling, in child sex abuse allegations the child must agree.

"Parents want to protect their child from going through court proceedings," said the officer.

Historical cases are easier for police to take to court because the victim is an adult who has built up the courage to come forward.

This police officer is worried that another inquiry into abuse that occurred decades ago will give a cover to paedophiles operating today because it "will distract the authorities, create hysteria, and nobble juries' objectivity".

Let us hope that's wrong.