Page 777 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 March 2019
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results of staying silent; the silence allows abuse to continue. Of course the attorney has the Greens’ support in attempting to reduce abuse.
The legislation makes it clear that all adults, except a person’s lawyer, have a duty to report child sexual abuse to the police. As the royal commission emphasised in its report, it is important that adults proactively report child sexual abuse because, by the very nature of the offence, it may be very difficult for victims to talk about it to anybody let alone to the police.
If adults become aware of child sexual abuse and report it to the police, there is a possibility that the abuse will be stopped and no more children will be abused. I say “possibility” because, as the royal commission makes clear, historically many children who have reported sexual abuse have not been believed. If adults around them notice the abuse and are protective and report this to the police, there is less pressure on the young person or child who is being abused because they do not have to themselves initiate contact with the police.
The hope is that by making the reporting of disclosures of child sexual abuse mandatory law, children who are victims will not remain exposed to continuing and repeated abuse and, all being well, other children will never experience it at all because an alleged abuser cannot just move on and groom another victim.
This legislation adds ministers of religions to the list of mandated reporters under section 562 of the Children and Young People Act 2008. Given the influence of ministers of religion in some parts of the community and their contact with young people, this is appropriate. The most controversial part of this legislation is removing the exemption for religious confession. Specifically requiring reporting diminishes the risk that once abuse is disclosed in a confessional the confessor is absolved in some way. Historically, this has allowed the abuse to continue as an offender has sought forgiveness and believes they have been pardoned only to continue to abuse that child and groom more child victims.
It is entirely possible that there may well be clergy in the future who do not abide by the law in reporting abuse disclosed in the confessional. In fact, some have been in the media actively stating that they will not break the seal of the confessional. We need to recognise that in practice this law is putting forward an expectation of conduct to protect children which by its nature cannot be policed. Nonetheless, it has meaning as an expectation.
I note that the attorney has taken an approach which reduces the impact on the right to religious freedom including but not limited to using an objective rather than a subjective mental state test when addressing the failure to report an offence and in limiting the failure to report offence to only child sexual and physical abuse. In that way the legislation still achieves the desire to deter child sexual and physical abuse and make this city safer for our kids whilst taking into consideration the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief.
The amendment bill also includes repealing the common-law presumption or, indeed, immunity that a boy under the age of 14 is incapable of having sexual intercourse and,
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