A case study in the Royal Commission’s final report on institutional responses to child sex abuse has revealed a five-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in a Tasmanian primary school several years ago.
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The commission heard in a private session that the girl was locked inside a toilet cubicle by three male students and sexually assaulted by once of them.
It heard that there was two earlier incidents with the other boys.
The mother of the girl said she and her husband were unsatisfied with the school’s response so they contacted the Education Department.
She said they were left feeling frustrated about the lack of information that was coming back to them and how both the school and department were responding.
A key recommendation in the final report is for a national redress scheme to be established with money contributed by the states and making failure to report child sexual abuse within an institution a criminal offence.
The cost of monetary payments in Tasmania, while taking into account money already spent on providing redress, was estimated to $8 million for the state government and $73 million for non-government institutions based on an average payment of $65,000 per victim.
For counselling, the costs were estimated to be $3 million for the government and $6 million outside of government.
Premier Will Hodgman earlier this week said the government was still working out how a national redress scheme might intersect with the state’s scheme.
There have been 2414 claims made to the Tasmanian Abuse in Care scheme and 1848 payments, totaling $54.8 million with an average payment of $29,653 per individual.
Victims are awarded minimum payments of $5000 and maximum payments of $60,000.
In a submission to the Royal Commission, the government said existing state schemes needed to be reviewed and, for national consistency, the commission needed to state a guiding set of principles.
The government said it should not be forced to fund payments not made by the obligated institution.
Greens leader Cassy O’Connor said the government has had long enough to work out its contribution.
“The Royal Commission report on redress was handed down in 2015, yet Premier Will Hodgman has still not made a commitment,” she said.
“The estimated cost of $1.7 million a year to the state is a small price to pay to give more than 1700 affected Tasmanians some semblance of justice.”
Justice Minister Elise Archer said the government had already taken action in a number of areas identified in the report.