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Families torn apart by child abuse
accusations are being urged to back a call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry
into what's been dubbed the "sex abuse industry". Gordon and Colleen Waugh, who run
Casualties of Sexual Allegations (COSA), say millions of dollars are dished
out for ACC claims each year--on little or no evidence. Gordon Waugh was a victim of a
false abuse complaint which instigated an ACC payment, despite the police
throwing the case out. Waugh says: "The quickest way
to break up a family is to say Dad sexually abused us. If the theories about
repressed memory were true, where are are all the cases now? "Many ACC compensation claims
were based on this nonsense, but we have yet to see ACC reclaiming the
unwarranted compensation payments. "Nor have we seen counsellors
actively involved in helping to reconcile the clients and families they so
badly damaged." COSA is calling on all
members--past and present--to support an inquiry in the light of the Peter
Ellis case. Five judges of the Court of Appeal
last month rejected Ellis' second appeal but admitted there were
"matters worthy of a Commission of Inquiry". Waugh says: "A Commission of
Inquiry is the best way of opening this entire topic to public scrutiny. "Before counsellors adopted
their unproven theories and beliefs about sexual abuse, ACC dealt with only a
few hundred claims for compensation a year. Millions "Since then, tens of
thousands of claims have been made, which costs the taxpayer hundreds of
millions of dollars." He says ACC still receives about
168 claims a week but police have reported an 18 percent drop in recorded
sexual crime in the past five years. Waugh says the system also fails
to recognise the rights of the 76,000 men who, since1988, have been accused
of sexually abusing family. "Accused men must be given an
absolute right to be told of the allegations and to challenge these attacks
on their integrity," he says. "A commission must examine these
systemic flaws." |
