October 22, 2018:

On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison offered a rare national apology, only the second since 2008, to victims of institutional child sexual abuse & their families, bringing some survivors to tears.

The gesture came out in a five-year inquiry into child sexual abuse that delved into more than 8,000 cases of sexual misconduct, most of them at religious and state-run institutions responsible for keeping children safe.

Morrison told lawmakers in the Australian capital, Canberra,“Today, as a nation, we confront our failure to listen, to believe, and to provide justice.”

He added,“We say sorry. To the children we failed, sorry. To the parents whose trust was betrayed and who have struggled to pick up the pieces, sorry.”

Expressions of national regret are reserved for egregious misdeeds in which the state has played a role.

In the previous instance in 2008, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized to members of the Stolen Generations of indigenous Australians, forcibly taken from their families & communities as young children under assimilation policies.

Morrison also repeated Monday’s apology in a speech to nearly 800 victims, some of whom began to cry, images broadcast on television showed.

“It was very, very intense to be in that room. I looked around and I thought to myself that there is no room of stronger people anywhere in the country.I am proud to be a victim and I am proud of all victims,” Graeme, a victim told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Morrison vowed tougher oversight, although some victims say the government has failed to do enough.

“If they think saying sorry is going to finish it, it’s not. There’s still so much to be done,” Tony Wardley, who suffered abuse in the 1980s, told the broadcaster.

Australia set up a redressal scheme this year to pay abuse victims compensation of up to A$150,000 ($106,000) each.

But the conservative government has yet to decide if it will adopt recommendations from the wide-ranging national inquiry, most notably one requiring Catholic priests to report child abuse they may learn about in the confessional.

A top Catholic body, the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, earlier had said that it would not comply with proposed state laws.

Source: Reuters

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