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The Dominion
January 11, 2002
The lump-sum gravy train
Editorial
The Government has
unleashed the ACC sexual abuse lump-sum gravy train again with all the bad
features of last time, including handing over the loot with no requirement
for the slightest proof that abuse happened, let alone a complaint to the
police or a court conviction.
This is political correctness gone mad. It opens the prospect of compensation
claims for sexual abuse rivalling the Maori grievance gold mine.
Accident compensation was introduced in 1974 to help people who were injured
at work, on the roads, at home or at play.
Its extension in the late 1980s to victims of sexual abuse who had no
physical injuries was a triumph of feminist lobbying.
The logic was that abuse victims were traumatised by their ordeals and needed
compensation for their mental suffering.
The shallowness of that argument is that no similar compensation was paid to
people just as traumatised by thugs robbing their homes, or to people who
witnessed horrific road crashes or murders.
Nor are lump sums for such traumas included in the Injury Prevention and
Rehabilitation Act which takes effect on April 1.
The act reinstates lump sums of up to $100,000 for people who are physically
injured in accidents and for victims of rape and sexual abuse.
But where accident victims will have to show evidence of serious impairment
caused by an injury, sexual abuse victims will merely have to obtain a report
from a counsellor recommending they get a payment.
In 1988, when ACC began paying $10,000 lump sums to women and children who
had been abused, it accepted 221 claims.
Word quickly spread and the numbers leapt exponentially.
In 1993, when the National government pulled the plug on what had become a
massive rort, 13,000 people got their $10,000 – in total a staggering $130
million.
No doubt among the recipients were people who had been abused – but clearly
so were many opportunists or "victims" diagnosed by suspect
therapies such as the now-discredited "recovered memories" theory.
Since 1993, sex abuse victims have been entitled to ACC-funded counselling,
which has spawned an industry of counsellors who need to diagnose abuse in
clients to get their funding.
There are now 900 ACC-recognised counsellors, among them a core group who
have been treating about 4000 new people a year.
These counsellors, whose specialty is finding abuse everywhere, will be the
gatekeepers to the lump-sum gravy train.
Apparently $60 million has been set aside for payments in the first 12
months. History suggests it will not be enough.
As Victoria University criminologist Willem de
Lint observes, with such easy pickings available, "people will follow
the money", as they did last time. He predicts a budget blowout.
With an entrepreneurial Christchurch law firm letter-boxing the country
offering to get victims cash for a commission, and ACC sendingevery health
clinic in New Zealand 0800-number cards to give to patients to phone for compensation,
this is likely to be an even more outrageous folly than before.
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