ABSTRACT

On 12 November 2012, the then Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It was approved by the then Governor-General, Dame Quentin Bryce, on 11 January 2013. The background to this pivotal decision was widespread community and governmental concern following several highly publicised cases of institutional abuse of children, and the allegations of a senior police officer, Inspector Peter Fox, of a cover up by Catholic Church clergy in the Hunter Valley region of NSW. There were already two state inquiries underway in Australia at the time, and there had been other inquiries over the previous years; some had called for a Royal Commission of this kind, including the Senate’s “Forgotten Australians” reports on children in institutional and out-of-home care (Australian Senate, 2004, 2009).