Compensation for pederasty in Australia to touch $3.4 bn

Sydney, Jan 30 (IANS/EFE) The Australian commission investigating the response of the country's institutions to the sexual abuse of minors has estimated that the total cost of a national compensation scheme for victims of abuse could reach $3.4 billion.

A commission paper released Friday is based on a survey conducted by a management consulting firm that assumes that there are 65,000 abuse "survivors" entitled to redress and that each one would receive about $50,000.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse reviewed sexual abuses within the country's religious, state and public institutions.

The commission chairman, Justice Peter McClellan, also advocated the removal of legal limits set at state and territorial levels for a person to file a complaint for child sexual abuse.

According to a paper inviting community input presented by the commission, many survivors have said that legal limits were an important and sometimes insurmountable barrier to launching a judicial process since the periods were generally three years, whereas in many cases the victims have not spoken of their cases for over two decades.

For Nicky Davis, a spokeswoman for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the report is of great importance because "it is about facing responsibility for an appalling abuse of absolute power against the most vulnerable in society".

The commission was created in 2012 after police in New South Wales accused the Catholic church of covering up evidence of organised paedophilia, of trying to hush up the investigations and of destroying crucial evidence to prevent legal proceedings.

--IANS/EFE

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