Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

Today I will add a few words to this heartfelt apology being made by the Senate and by this parliament to victims of institutional child sex abuse in Australia. The sad truth is that people I care about deeply are among the victims of such heinous acts, acts that have life-long consequences. I want to acknowledge all of those who fought so bravely for the acknowledgement and recognition of this issue—for redress, for apology, for justice and, most importantly, to recognise that we need to listen to children and that we must have robust institutions and a society that never allows this to happen again.

The evidence before the royal commission exposed heinous crimes perpetuated against vulnerable children. And the evidence largely shows that it should have been seen for what it was at the time—that there were enough people who should have known at the time that something needed to be done. Many children did try and speak up about their abuse but were ignored. The reputations of adults and institutions were privileged over the vulnerable victims of crime. I've spent some time reading the narrative stories in the royal commission's report—and there are thousands of them. In many of those cases someone knew, or should have known, about the abuse that was happening. In other cases children had been intimidated and frightened into remaining quiet. That powerful people in institutions should privilege themselves over the charges in their care is in and of itself also a heinous crime. A failure to provide a protective environment, a failure to believe children, and a culture that diminished their rights and voices of children—environments like that must never be allowed to fester in our nation again.

There are very deeply shocking accounts for which our nation must hold itself properly accountable. The case studies and private sessions left absolutely no doubt that a great many people, thousands and thousands of Australians, were injured by being subjected to sexual and other forms of abuse while in institutions or in connection with institutions with responsibility. I read stories of child protection systems returning children to abusive families where convicted paedophiles resided. We heard stories of institutions where systemic abuse occurred. The pages of the royal commission's report and, most importantly, the narratives and personal stories reveal the history of people who had their childhoods utterly shattered. Their childhoods were taken from them and their trust in people was broken and damaged. I really encourage people to look at the private sessions that have been written up so that you can listen not to this parliament but to the voices of those who have been missing in this debate for too long. From the evidence presented to the royal commission, their injuries, both physical and psychological, have been severe and lifelong and play out in a great many ways in terms of people's personal relationships, their employment, their children and their involvement in the criminal justice system. The impact of these crimes is lifelong.

It was also clear, as I said before, that in a great many cases the abuse was known about and not stopped or prevented and perpetrators were not held to account. I'm going to share one of those stories with the chamber today. Kaden was made a ward of the state when he was three. He spent time in a number of children's homes and juvenile justice centres in New South Wales in the 1980s. He was physically and sexually abused in at least three of those institutions. They were, according to Kaden, 'a cesspit for paedophiles—one big paedophile ring'. As well as the abuse he experienced at the hands of at least 15 to 20 workers at the institutions, Kaden told the commissioner that the boys were beaten and restrained excessively. He said:

I've seen kids get their arms broken and their shoulders popped out ... it was horrible.

To escape the abuse at one such institution, Kaden began running away to Kings Cross. He said:

I've been a heroin addict since I was 10, and started shooting up at the age of 10 and you know, suppressed the things that happened to me. I never wanted to talk about it. When I was stoned, I could deal with it. When I weren't stoned, it was just, yeah, it played on my mind.

This young man grew up to become very violent. He said:

I had a lot of anger in me ... I was very violent drunk, so I stopped drinking ... I believe if things like that never happened to me, I ... probably wouldn't be in jail. Most of my crime is violent assault ... It stuffed me up, me childhood, basically. I've been in and out of institutions all me life. I'm starting to break the cycle now.

He's currently on methadone, and he said:

I want to try to get off that as well and live a normal life ... but one step at a time.

One reason Kaden chose to start speaking up about his abuse a couple of years ago was that, as he said:

I don't cry ... My people, my family, they think I'm heartless, and they don't understand, like the effects that it had on me as a child, because I don't speak about what happened to me, and they've only known me to be violent and they don't know why.

As well as his issues with anger, Kaden finds his relationships with other men difficult. He said:

I can't be comfortable with men ... My uncles and my real father, they can't show no affection towards me. Like if they go to touch me, I pull away from them ... I told [my father] things had happened to me as a child and he tried to comfort me and I pushed him ... 'You can't touch me, Dad.'

Kaden received copies of his records with the help of the Legal Aid service. He said:

There was a lot of stuff in there that just blew me away. There were things in there that I didn't even know ... that helped me, with a bit of closure and that. But there was a lot of stuff that was upsetting ... I was placed in a paedophile ring and they knew about it, but there was nothing done.

Kaden told the commissioner that there are reports in his file about him being sexually assaulted at two of the institutions. He said:

It's written. It's actually written there in my documents—

but nothing was done about it. He said:

I come out with it, I said. 'He's touching kids,' you know, and I was all hushed up ... and sent to another joint ... They made out I was being violent towards the other kids and got me sent to [another institution]. A lot of shit got covered up.

When a female worker at one of the institutions tried to help, 'she got bullied and sacked from there because she wanted to know what was going on and she tried to come out with it'.

Kaden chose to come forward to the royal commission. He said:

If I can stop one kid being touched, it's better than nothing. At the end of the day ... something's got to be done about the institutions ... I honestly believe that ... even myself, I was being bounced between [those institutions] ... basically, I was just being passed around, you know.

Kaden told the commissioner:

I'm still here to talk about it, so that's the main thing. There's a lot of people that I was in the institutions with that are not alive no more, you know, take their own lives or OD'd or whatever the case may be, but I'm still here to talk about it, so that's the main thing.

There are thousands of these stories on the royal commission's website, and I encourage members of this place and the community to take stock of what has truly happened in our nation and the blind eye that we turned to the abuse of our nation's young people. If this place, if this chamber, has any purpose at all it should be to make sure that we listen to people who have been forgotten in our nation—to listen and act to ensure effective redress and, most importantly, to protect children in our nation from now on and always. I know abuse still happens in our society. It happens in families. It happens in institutions. We can't pretend that grand statements in this chamber will prevent that overnight, but we can and must do more.

We have been too slow in picking up and adopting the recommendations of the royal commission. It has taken, frankly, too long to see many of those recommendations implemented. I have paid close attention to those recommendations, and they did not make their recommendations lightly. The evidence from victims of this abuse give a clear mandate to the recommendations of the royal commission. They should be implemented faithfully, and the task for all of us now in this parliament is to follow, faithfully, the recommendations that have been made by the commission to protect our nation's children. The commission got its job done very efficiently, in a timely manner, but it is of great concern to me that the time line for a great many of the recommendations has already gone a long way beyond what the royal commission recommended they should be. If there is one message I have for the chamber today it is that we have been too slow not only over the great vast history of this abuse but also in responding to the need of making sure this never happens again.

Revealed in the pages of the royal commission's final report is a history of the betrayal and violations of the hearts, bodies and wellbeing of thousands of fellow Australians, Australians who were children at the time of this abuse. It should be unimaginable that our institutions or individuals could have participated in, perpetuated, tolerated, covered up and condoned every aspect of this abuse. We need to face up as a nation to exactly what has happened, to provide meaningful redress and to say sorry as we do in this place today and to mean it. It is critical that we take the human rights of children in Australia seriously and uphold them. We must listen to the voices of children who have been so much missing from this debate.