Police face flood of sex claims from royal commission

THE first wave of criminal prosecutions brought as a result of the child-abuse royal commission have begun to hit the courts.

Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald, left, Justice Jennifer Coate and Commissioner Helen Milroy this week. Picture:Jeremy Piper

THE first wave of criminal prosecutions brought as a result of the child-abuse royal commission have begun to hit the courts, with police pursuing more than 140 separate criminal investigations into information provided by the commissioners.

An 88-year-old man appeared in Coffs Harbour Local Court this week charged with sexually abusing his foster daughter during the 1960s, when she was about 12 years old.

His alleged victim said she ­approached the police only after the establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, to which she has given evidence in a private hearing.

“If it wasn’t for the … royal commission being formed, there would be no way I’d have the courage to come forward,” said the woman, who cannot be identified.

“It’s the fact that I wasn’t alone. Years ago I thought I wouldn’t have done it but (I did) because it wasn’t just me coming forward now.”

With the royal commission entering its third year of operations, much of the focus on it has been on the public hearings into historical abuse committed in church, school or government ­institutions.

Far less attention has been paid to the work done behind the scenes to help investigate individual cases and bring those who may be responsible to justice.

To date, the commissioners have held private hearings with more than 3000 victims of alleged child abuse and referred more than 500 cases to police forces across the country.

At least 142 active police invest­igations were launched as a result, seven of which have led to criminal charges being laid. “There are many other matters awaiting possible invest­igation,” a spokesman for the royal commission said.

While the subjects of many of these police investigations are not known, one relatively high-­profile case being pursued by NSW police involves allegations of abuse at the Salvation Army-run Gill Memorial Boys Home.

Evidence before the commission shows that nine children at the home allege they were abused by a Salvation Army officer, who cannot be named.

The officer was among 19 of the church’s officers and employees who allegedly abused at least 115 boys at children’s homes in NSW and Queensland over several decades before 1983, the commission heard.

The church “acknowledges this is the greatest failure in its history in Australia. It ­acknowledges that many children entrusted to its care in the past suffered horrific abuse,” Salvation Army lawyer Kate Eastman SC has told the commission.

After a separate public hearing last October, counsel assisting the commission Simeon Beckett recommended that the Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston be referred to police for failing to ­report child sex abuse committed by his father in the 1970s.

Frank Houston admitted the abuse to his son and this could have been used to secure a conviction had Brian Houston informed police, Mr Beckett’s submission found.

“As that information may ­relate to contravention of a law ... it is submitted it is appropriate to refer Pastor Brian Houston’s conduct to the NSW Police Commissioner,” Mr Beckett said.

Hillsong lawyer Mark Higgins has told the commission that there was a “preponderance of evidence” that Brian Houston had “a reasonable excuse” for not ­reporting his father’s confession.

The NSW Police Force has receive­d 210 referrals from the royal commission and “a large number are still current and are being invest­igated”, the force said in a statement.