The Royal Commission
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
On Friday 11 January 2013, Her Excellency Quentin Bryce, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, appointed a six-member Royal Commission to investigate Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The Royal Commission inquired into how institutions with a responsibility for children have managed and responded to allegations and instances of child sexual abuse.
When the two leadership groups of the Catholic Church in Australia, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia, set up the Truth Justice and Healing Council in December 2012 they did so knowing the Royal Commission into institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse would reveal enormous and confronting challenges.
The Church’s history has involved crimes, cover ups, failures of leadership and a careless disregard for some of the most defenseless members of our community, children.
And despite the very real improvements that have taken place since 1996 with the introduction of the Church’s two victims’ reparation schemes, the Melbourne Response and Towards Healing, more still needs to be done.
On 15 December 2017 the Royal Commission presented a final report to the Governor-General, detailing the culmination of a five year inquiry into institutional responses to child sexual abuse and related matters.
The Final Report Structure
Click the heading of the volume to read more information.
- Recommendations
- Preface and Executive Summary includes a summary of the final report and a complete list of all recommendations. Final information update contains statistics from the group of survivors we heard from in 8,013 private sessions, held between May 2013 and November 2017.
- Volume 1, Our inquiry introduces the Final Report, describes the establishment, scope and operations of the Royal Commission.
Understanding child sexual abuse in institutional contexts
- Volume 2, Nature and cause describes what the Royal Commission has learned about the nature and cause of child sexual abuse in institutional contexts. It includes one recommendation
- Volume 3, Impacts explains the impacts of child sexual abuse in institutional contexts on survivors and often on their family members, friends, and entire communities.
- Volume 4, Identifying and disclosing child sexual abuse describes what we learned about survivors’ experiences of disclosing child sexual abuse.
- Volume 5, Private sessions examines survivors’ experiences of child sexual abuse as told to Commissioners during private sessions.
- Volume 6, Making institutions child safe describes the need for a national child sexual abuse prevention strategy and proposes child safe standards, including how they should be implemented. It includes 24 recommendations.
- Volume 7, Improving institutional responding and reporting looks at institutions’ responses to complaints of child sexual abuse and how they report these matters to external government authorities. It includes 12 recommendations.
- Volume 8, Recordkeeping and information sharing examines the records, recordkeeping and information sharing of institutions that care for or provide services to children. It includes 23 recommendations.
- Volume 9, Advocacy, support and therapeutic treatment services looks at what we learned about survivors’ needs in terms of advocacy, support and treatment and offers recommendations for improving service systems to better respond to survivors’ needs. It includes nine recommendations.
- Volume 10, Children with harmful sexual behaviours examines what we learned about institutional responses to children with harmful sexual behaviours. It includes seven recommendations.
- Volume 11, Historical residential institutions describes what we learned about survivors’ experiences of, and institutional responses to, child sexual abuse in residential institutions pre-1990.
- Volume 12, Contemporary out-of-home care examines what we learned about institutional responses to child sexual abuse in contemporary out-of-home care. It includes 22 recommendations.
- Volume 13, Schools describes what we learned about institutional responses to child sexual abuse in schools. It includes eight recommendations.
- Volume 14, Sport, recreation, arts, culture, community and hobby groups looks at what we learned about institutional responses to child sexual abuse in sport and recreation contexts. It includes four recommendations.
- Volume 15, Contemporary detention environments reviews what we learned about institutional responses to child sexual abuse in contemporary detention environments. It includes 15 recommendations.
- Volume 16, Religious institutions examines what we learned about institutional responses to child sexual abuse in religious institutions. It is divided into three books. It includes 58 recommendations.
- Volume 17, Beyond the Royal Commission describes the impact and legacy of the Royal Commission and discusses monitoring and reporting on the implementation of our recommendations. It includes six recommendations.
Fact sheets
A brief guide to the Final Report
A brief guide to the Final Report – Children and young people
A brief guide to the Final Report – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
A brief guide to the Final Report – Disability
Text courtesy of the Truth Justice and Healing Council website
