Before Reporting Historical Institutional Child Sexual Abuse - Please Read

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For years, I had carried the weight of what had happened to me as a child. The flashbacks that weaved themselves into life’s milestones - my first real relationship, the first time I had sex, when I gave birth to my first child and feeling anxious around every man who was in a position of authority. Like so many survivors, I believed that if I could just find the courage to report the abuse, it would somehow shake the shame that I had carried for years. As if it would be the antidote for the shit show that my life had become.

I imagined that once I told my story, the justice system would take over. That police would gather the evidence, lawyers would guide me through the process, and eventually there would be an outcome. I remember walking into the police station in 2017, I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I believed the system was built to help people like me. Nearly a decade later, I look back on that day and see a very naive self who believed in a very utopian version of the justice system.

Alongside the criminal investigation, I have spent years pursuing a civil claim against the institution who is responsible for putting the perpetrator in the position where he could rape me. I have navigated the National Redress Scheme, attended medical examinations, sat through interviews, handed over deeply personal records, relived my childhood more times than I care to remember and waited - sometimes for months, sometimes for years - for the next step. The criminal investigation has now been referred to the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions twice. Today, it once again sits on the DPP's desk in a queue with no ticket. Kind of like the supermarket deli. But at least there, you know you’ll eventually get your 1 kilo of bacon.

No one warned me that while the abuse happened in my childhood, the process of seeking justice could consume a large part of my adult life. And the most precious years of my children’s life. I wasn't warned that the stress of the process would likely take it’s toll on my health and induce early onset menopause, would leave me with no option but to quit my dream job, that the assessments and statements would cause nightmares, insomnia and disassociation. Just to name a few.

What began as a search for accountability slowly became something else entirely. A second trauma. This is not a story about one lawyer, one police officer or one institution. It is about a system that asks extraordinary courage from survivors but too often repays that courage with delay, bureaucracy and silence. While the perpetrators continue to live shamelessly and a lot of the times, deceivingly, among us.

The Royal Commission exposed decades of systemic failure. Governments apologised. Institutions apologised. Trauma-informed practice became part of the national conversation. But there is another conversation we’re still not having. Why isn’t there a Commissioner for Survivors, who can advocate for victims seeking justice.

There are police investigations operating independently from civil claims. There are lawyers, barristers, medical experts, insurers, government agencies, referral services and regulators. Every organisation has its own process, its own timeframes and some have their own vested interest which is not in the interest of you or your case. Together, however, they create a labyrinth that survivors are expected to navigate while carrying the lifelong effects of childhood trauma.

Somewhere along the way, survivors stop feeling like victims of crime and begin feeling like administrators of their own suffering. I understand that decisions about criminal charges cannot be rushed and must be based on evidence, not emotion. That justice requires independence. But justice also requires timeliness.

Every month a survivor waits is another month the abuse remains an active part of their daily life. Every delay means another birthday, another Christmas, another milestone arrives before the legal process moves forward. The truth is, when a process stretches over years, justice itself begins to feel uncertain.

The waiting feels like punishment for choosing the path to justice.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of my journey came years after I reported the abuse. On the day I walked into that police station, I never imagined I would one day be filing complaints about my own legal representation. Like every survivor, I placed enormous trust in the professionals tasked with guiding me through one of the most important legal processes of my life.

That trust should never be underestimated. Historical institutional child sexual abuse matters are unlike ordinary legal disputes. They involve profound trauma, complex evidence and decades of psychological harm. Survivors are often placing their future and some of their most painful memories in the hands of professionals they have only just met.

When communication breaks down, transparency disappears or confidence in that representation begins to erode, the consequences extend far beyond frustration. For survivors, those failures can reopen wounds that have taken years to confront. The abuse itself stripped away our sense of safety and control. A legal process that leaves survivors feeling unheard, ignored or abandoned risks repeating that loss in a different form.

My own experience has prompted me to think more broadly about Australia's publicly funded support systems. They exist to help survivors access justice, but they should also be subject to the same scrutiny and accountability expected of every publicly funded service.

I was referred to my original solicitor through Knowmore, the national legal service established to assist survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. Thousands of survivors have relied on its services since it was established following the Royal Commission. If a government-funded service refers a survivor to a private lawyer, what responsibility does it retain after that referral is made? From my experience, non at all.

How are those practitioners selected? What ongoing oversight exists? Does anyone monitor whether survivors receive timely, competent and trauma-informed representation? If concerns arise, are referral practices reviewed? Governments invest millions of dollars in helping survivors access justice. Taxpayers have every right to know whether those systems are delivering the outcomes they were designed to achieve.

After spending close to a decade seeking justice, I cannot help but wonder whether governments have become better at building bureaucracy than delivering outcomes. Imagine if more resources were directed towards timely compensation, specialist trauma counselling, healthcare, education and practical support instead of expanding the layers of administration survivors must navigate.

Surely the measure of success should not be how many systems exist but whether survivors actually receive justice. Every federal budget, Australians debate the cost of the NDIS. We debate welfare. We debate Medicare. We debate mental health spending. But almost nobody asks a far more confronting question. What is child sexual abuse costing Australia?

The answer is measured in billions of dollars. The Australian Institute of Family Studies estimated that child abuse and neglect costs Australia billions every year through healthcare, policing, courts, child protection, mental health services, lost productivity and the long-term impacts of trauma.

Those costs are often discussed as though they are the price of supporting survivors. It’s the wrong way to frame the conversation. Every counseling session, every police investigation, every psychiatric admission, every criminal prosecution, every civil claim and every welfare payment made because trauma has affected someone's ability to work exists for one reason: an adult chose to sexually abuse a child.

You might be wondering why I’m pairing child sexual abuse and the economy…It’s simple, people don’t listen unless it directly costs them. So this is to show you that it does. Even if you don’t feel it or see it. It’s costing you every time you pay your taxes.

Child sexual abuse is not only a personal tragedy; it is one of Australia's greatest public policy failures. It steals children's innocence, fractures families, erodes public trust and costs the nation billions of dollars every year. We should be angry about that, not because governments spend money supporting survivors, but because we continue paying the price for crimes that should never have happened in the first place. For every child who is failed by our institutions creates another cost that Australia will carry for generations. Look at what we are seeing in the childcare industry-paedophiles are causing paths of destruction in every corner of our community.

Nearly ten years after walking into that police station, I still believe reporting was the right thing to do. I only wish the system gave a shit and stopped asking so much of us. And instead, hunted down these criminals like they were protecting their own children.