Child sex abuse hysteria and the Ellis case


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The Truth
November 12 1999

Abuse claims costing us all
by Maryvonne Gray

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."

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CAPTION: Campaigning: Colleen and Gordon Waugh.