PIAC recently made a submission in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse consultation paper on redress and civil litigation.
The consultation paper considers a number of proposed features of a redress scheme and possible changes to civil litigation, which would be needed to compensate survivors of childhood sexual abuse in institutional care.
Through its legal practice, PIAC has experience representing victims of crime, assisting them to seek compensation through the NSW Victims Compensation Scheme, incident-specific redress schemes and through civil litigation. All of our clients experience some form of disadvantage and vulnerability, with a number suffering from historic incidents of child sexual abuse.
Drawing principally on this experience and our work in relation to seeking compensation on behalf of Stolen Generations clients and with the Stolen Wages redress scheme, PIAC recommends a national redress scheme be established.
Such a scheme should have low barriers to access, with the provision of independent legal advice and support factored into the funding model. PIAC also recommends that accessing the redress scheme should not be a barrier to civil litigation and that there should be no limitation periods imposed on these claims.
Our submission is available here.
Photo: Flickr/ Rae Allen