Home Page - Save Our Kids - Flimflam covers up the scale of abuse

“We failed to keep these children safe. We failed to listen when they spoke out. We failed to act to ensure that it did not happen again.”

We have heard to these words too many times from the church.

This time it was not a bishop reading this dog-eared script, but the premier of the Australian state of Victoria, Jacinta Allen, apologising for sexual abuse by government school teachers. She was responding this week to a heart-rending report about abuse in a primary school in the bayside suburb of Beaumaris, about 20 kilometres from Melbourne.

In 1971 and 1972 four paedophile teachers coincided at Beaumaris and abused scores of children. They began their abhorrent activity in the 1960s and continued into the 1970s. Thanks to activists, the horrors of Beaumaris Primary School were publicised.

The tragedy at Beaumaris Primary was merely a microcosm of a statewide sexual abuse crisis in Victorian government schools. Data collated indicates that sexual abuse of children took place in many more schools across the state.

Now Premier Allen has been pressured into establishing a forum where Victorians who were abused before the year 2000 can share their stories. 

Truth at last?

Nope. This is a con job. This is political flimflam at its most sordid.

Jacinta Allen is trying to drown her state’s record of abusive teachers and bureaucratic stonewalling with crocodile tears.

"I tell people the Victorian Education Department are the worst to deal with, and that as far as cover-ups, they're every bit as bad as the worst bits of the Catholic Church, and people can't believe it,” lawyer John Rule told Jackson. "The cover-up was comprehensive, and they managed to slip through the gaps in terms of inquiries and royal commissions, so they've never been properly looked at or had their feet held to the fire. The extent of the problem has never been publicly documented, therefore the Education Department has never had to address it or grapple with it in any way."

The horror is a matter of public record. About 400 civil claims have been made against the Victorian government since 2010. Lives have been ruined. Teachers have gone to jail. Compensation lawyers have won big payouts for their clients. But how deep does this sewer go? What is the Premier’s plan to clean the Augean stables?

It’s going to be a forum with a Monty Python-esque name, “the Independent Truth-Telling Function”.

For survivors, that sounds a lot more like a truth-giving process, and a traumatic one. Many would much prefer a truth-receiving process.

And who will organise this investigation of Victorian government schools? Well, the Victorian government, of course. It’s not going to be a judicial inquiry. Who better to look after the chooks than a wise old fox?

It will investigate only abuse which happened before 2000. That was 25 years ago. Have there been no cases since then? Where is the transparency in that?

It will begin its work late in 2024 and will report in 2026. So it basically has a mere 12 months to do its work. The Beaumaris inquiry took one year to examine the ramifications of abuse at one school. The Royal Commission took five long years, from 2013 to 2017.

It seems obvious that Premier Allen has cynically shut down an incendiary inquiry which could tarnish her government, the Department of Education and one of the state’s strongest unions, the Australian Education Union Victoria. And could lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation claims.