Morning mail: royal commission 'life-changing' for victims
Guardian Australia
Graham Russell
13 December 2017
Good morning, this is Graham Russell bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 14 December.
Top stories
The five-year-long royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse wraps up today, and presents its final report and recommendations to the governor general. It has been called “life-changing”, “life-saving” and “a call to arms” on child protection for all institutions. Experts agree the painstaking, sensitive and thorough work the commission has done over the past five years is only the beginning of the road to reform: the true measure of its success lies in changes to be implemented by bodies including state and federal governments. “Has it changed the lives of children? Has it changed the lives of survivors? Are we making the world a better place?” asks Prof Leah Bromfield, the co-director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection at the University of South Australia.
Manny Waks summed up what the royal commission process has meant to him as a victim: “It was us against everyone and then the royal commission came along. Suddenly people said, ‘Hang on, what you have been saying has been true all along.’ And even more people came forward. And it was such a vindication and validation that we didn’t do anything wrong.” For her part, Bromfield hopes the official marking of the end of the commission’s work on Thursday won’t mean that its findings to date and the stories of survivors fall from the public consciousness. “I really worry about what that would say to survivors,” she said. “We’ve had five years where we’ve been trying to say. ‘You matter. This matters. Your story matters.’ And if we drop it like a hot potato, I can’t imagine how devastating the impact of that would be.”
Originally published at Guardian Australia.
Top stories
The five-year-long royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse wraps up today, and presents its final report and recommendations to the governor general. It has been called “life-changing”, “life-saving” and “a call to arms” on child protection for all institutions. Experts agree the painstaking, sensitive and thorough work the commission has done over the past five years is only the beginning of the road to reform: the true measure of its success lies in changes to be implemented by bodies including state and federal governments. “Has it changed the lives of children? Has it changed the lives of survivors? Are we making the world a better place?” asks Prof Leah Bromfield, the co-director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection at the University of South Australia.
Manny Waks summed up what the royal commission process has meant to him as a victim: “It was us against everyone and then the royal commission came along. Suddenly people said, ‘Hang on, what you have been saying has been true all along.’ And even more people came forward. And it was such a vindication and validation that we didn’t do anything wrong.” For her part, Bromfield hopes the official marking of the end of the commission’s work on Thursday won’t mean that its findings to date and the stories of survivors fall from the public consciousness. “I really worry about what that would say to survivors,” she said. “We’ve had five years where we’ve been trying to say. ‘You matter. This matters. Your story matters.’ And if we drop it like a hot potato, I can’t imagine how devastating the impact of that would be.”
Originally published at Guardian Australia.