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Child sex
abuse hysteria and the Ellis case |
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The wisdom of
Gordon Waugh - Index |
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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.
"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." -------------------- CAPTION: Campaigning:
Colleen and Gordon Waugh. |
