THE state government has made a good call in asking the Family and Community Development Committee to investigate how religious and other non-government groups handle claims of child abuse within their organisations.
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Under the terms of reference of this inquiry, the committee will look at:
One: The practices, policies and protocols in such organisations for the handling of allegations of criminal abuse of children, including measures put in place by various organisations in response to concerns about such abuse within the organisation or the potential for such abuse to occur.
Two: Whether there are systemic practices in such organisations that operate to preclude or discourage the reporting of suspected criminal abuse of children to state authorities.
Three: Whether changes to law or to practices, policies and protocols in such organisations are required to help prevent criminal abuse of children by personnel in such organisations and to deal with allegations of such abuse.
The investigation must be carefully managed so it doesn’t turn into a witch-hunt. There will be people hoping this investigation will deliver the justice they believe is rightly deserved for past incidents.
Clearly, under the terms of reference this will not be the outcome. What this investigation should uncover is how each organisation deals with allegations of abuse against children.
If any of these organisations, including the Catholic Church, which grabbed much of the attention after yesterday’s announcement, are found to have acted improperly or don’t have the correct measures in place to investigate child abuse claims, they should be brought to account.
From there we must hope this inquiry leads to changes in any areas found lacking. Organisations with nothing to hide have nothing to fear from this process.
