Child abuse redress scheme ‘obscenely cruel’
IF Malcolm Turnbull and Daniel Andrews think 90 days is an adequate amount of time to settle a sex abuse case, they haven’t been listening, writes Hetty Johnston.
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SURVIVORS must be feeling like they’re being done over, that someone is trying to cheat them and take something away from them yet again.
After five years of listening to victim statements, taking advice from experts, and spending tens of millions of dollars, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made the recommendation that victims be given 12 months to accept offers of compensation provided to them.
But rather than taking that advice and running with it, this week, the federal government instead announced it would give victims just 90 days instead, something the NSW and Victorian governments have signed on to. I don’t know where that timeframe came from, but it’s clear that it hasn’t come from a place of understanding or compassion; it’s an incredibly unreasonable amount of time.
Twelve months allows people to work through the psychological issues, to deal with the closure of something that they’re so used to having with them, while also reaching a finality. That is fair and reasonable.
Giving just 90 days is unfair and coercive. It is a bullying, pressure sales tactic to trap people who don’t always have the skills, psychological, or emotional resources to resist or navigate their offer, to rush in and make a decision favouring those who are making the offer. It is the kind of ‘limited offer,’ and ‘get in quick, or you’ll miss out’ type of scheme that we see used in retail and sales. It should not be something we see when discussing child sex abuse victims and their very real right to compensation. And from where I’m standing, it looks as though it’s designed to reduce the rights of victims yet again.
As the Law Council said earlier this week, this proposed time frame is inadequate and especially unrealistic, but I’d add that it’s also cruel. We’re talking about people who have an understandable, well-earned fear and distrust of authority, who have been previously refused civil redress by unfair Statutes of Limitations on their rights, who have been marginalised, ignored and traumatised most of their lives; this is D-Day for them. This is finality. This is closure. This is the end of something that has been a part of them their entire lives. And they now have to decide in 90 days how an important part of it all ends? It’s just obscenely cruel.
Everyone deals with things differently, but the research shows us that as a rule, victims will suffer through silence, secrecy, shame, and fear at some level for the entirety of their lives. Those things are the ball and chain that survivors drag with them everywhere, through no fault of their own. Ninety days is no amount of time for these same people to seek the advice they need and decide how they should respond — to decide which decision is finally in their best interests and not someone else’s.
The Royal Commission understands this. They are the experts, and if the government won’t listen to them, we’re in a lot of trouble because it shows that we still haven’t learned and we’re still not listening. But we have to listen. We have to honour these people, honour their pain and suffering. These people have waited their whole lives for justice and now it’s the turn of those held responsible for the harm to wait, to show some respect and remorse, some humility and some humanity.
Hetty Johnston AM is the founder and chair of Bravehearts, Australia’s leading child protection organisation.
Originally published as Child abuse redress scheme ‘obscenely cruel’