Tag Archives: Forgotten Australians

Terms of Reference – Apportioning Responsibilities (Or: Robin Hood Had it Right)

Shortly after the announcement of the Royal Commission, on-line media polls were taken concerning whether or not the government should pay reparations to the victims of abuse. The split was essentially 1/3rd each for government paying, government not paying, and … Continue reading

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Terms of Reference – Compensation (Or: Here’s Your Brass Watch, Now Get Lost)

Image source: http://www.irishecho.com.au/tag/royal-commission-into-child-abuse Noted law academic, Judy Courtin, remarked in an article in The Conversation that, “the elephant in the room is the issue of compensation.” While the royal commission’s terms of reference do not allow it to award compensation, … Continue reading

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Intrafamilial Abuse and Foster Care (Or: Still Swept Under the Carpet)

Image source: http://02varvara.wordpress.com/tag/child-abuse/ Foster care is the new preferred system for children taken from their parents forcibly, when there have been problems for them in their original family. Until about the 1980s, the preferred system had been institutions known as … Continue reading

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Other Abuse (Or: Setting the Scene)

Psychological, spiritual, and systems abuse do not directly fall under the terms of reference of the Royal Commission. As was detailed in yesterday’s posting, organisations will be happy to have these issues excluded in order to suffer less damage to … Continue reading

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Terms of Reference – Types of Abuse – Physical Abuse (Or: Things Aren’t Always Overt)

Nuns or others engaging in physical abuse constitute one of the least reported aspects of church abuse. Those who were in their children’s homes know this very well. At present, it seems that the issue will continue to be under-reported … Continue reading

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The Terms of Reference Revisited, Part 1 (Or: Still a Host of Devils in the Detail)

The previous posting on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission only covered the most basic aspects. The problems arising from them will take a much more thorough coverage. The principal issue to be addressed is that of covering … Continue reading

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The Seal of the Confessional (Or: Hear No Evil, Report No Evil)

Mandatory reporting of child abuse revealed during the confessional process within the Catholic and Anglican Churches will be high on the agenda at the royal commission for many. There will be a real bun fight over this with supporters of … Continue reading

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The Salvation Army (Or: The War on Kids)

[Disclosure: The author was an inmate of the Salvation Army Home for Boys at Indooroopilly, Brisbane from 1958 to 1960 and appeared, in 2004, in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s TV programme, “The Homies” on Four Corners, which detailed abuses in … Continue reading

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Really Good Liars (Or: A Priest in Sheep’s Clothing)

The author will resort to using the first person for this personal account. It concerns a situation which should serve as a warning about really good liars. It was early 1990. I was accompanying a few people who had been … Continue reading

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Seventh Day Adventists (Or: Same Old, Same Old)

The Seventh Day Adventists Church in Australia is small, and the incidents of child sexual abuse are few, but the patterns of dealing with the problem mirror those of the larger churches. Denial, hush-money and moving offenders around appear to … Continue reading

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