The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses for Child Sexual Abuse (the Royal Commission) was called by the Prime Minister at the end of 2012. It is set up to find out why child sex abuse happens in institutions, what the problems are with how institutions respond to child sex abuse, and how to change institutions to stop child sex abuse from happening.
What we're doing
People with Disability Australia has been funded by the Department of Social Services to support the work of the Royal Commission.
We are here to help children and people with disability to participate in the Royal Commission.
We want to make sure that children and adults with disability can tell their stories of child sexual abuse, if they want to.
We want to make sure that the experiences of children with disability who have been sexually abused in mainstream institutions are included: places like schools, hospitals, sporting clubs.
We also want to make sure that the experiences of children with disability who have been sexually abused in the kinds of institutions that are usually only for people with disability are included in the Royal Commission: places like respite centres, day centres, large residential centres, group homes, hospitals, institutions for people with mental illness, special schools, children's homes.
How we are doing this
Our project is made up of three key elements: Advocacy, Training and Systemic and Policy Issues.
Our project is supported by a Project Steering Group, which includes people with disability with lived experience of child sexual abuse in institutional settings. We are also drawing on the expertise of an Expert Advisory Group, which includes experts in areas such as: violence prevention, training methodology, child protection, and so on.
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Promotional Materials: Brochures, posters and other promotional material about our work.
More information about the Royal Commission
There is lots of information available about the Royal Commission's work via their website.
How to contact the Royal Commission
A collection of brochures (you can order these).
The Royal Commission's Interim Report was released at the end of June 2014 in both PDF and HTML formats. Volume 1 contains their exploration of the issues related to child sexual abuse thus far. Volume 2 is made up of individual stories, and includes artwork and poetry made by survivors.
Resources
Below is an audio described and captioned video that explains more about how we are supporting people with disability affected by the Royal Commission.
Click this link to access a descriptive transcript of the above video (available in Microsoft Word format).
Click this link to download an audio only version of the video (In Waveform Audio File WAV format).
An Auslan translated video is below.
