The Damages of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse in Australia

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Commonwealth and States investigated a growing number of concerns about the welfare of children who had been, or were still, in institutions and other care arrangements. These investigations included the Commonwealth’s Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare 1985 report on children in institutional and other forms of care and states’ reports on aspects of children in care between 1981 and 1999.

These reports paved the way for national inquiries between 1997 and 2005 which culminated in the 2017 final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This report and reports of the preceding inquiries inform our understanding of the trauma that shapes the lives of survivors of institutional child sexual abuse in Australia.

1997 Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families

 The Attorney-General of Australia commissioned the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to conduct this inquiry. Stories of sexual exploitation and abuse were common in evidence to the inquiry. Nationally, at least one in every six (17.5%) witnesses to the inquiry reported such victimisation. A similar proportion (13.3%) reported sexual abuse to the WA Aboriginal Legal Service: 14.5% of those fostered and 10.9% of those placed on missions. These vulnerable children had no one to turn to for protection or comfort. They were rarely believed if they disclosed the abuse.

There are many well-recognised psychological impacts of childhood sexual abuse. They include confusion about sexual identity and sexual norms, confusion of sex with love and aversion to sex or intimacy. When the child is blamed or is not believed, other impacts can be added including guilt, shame, lowered self-esteem and a sense of being different from others.

These impacts amount to a variant of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The reported effects include sleep disturbance, irritability and concentration difficulties (associated with hyper arousal), fears, anxiety, depression and guilt. Repeat victimisation compounds these effects. The common psychological impacts have often manifested in isolation, drug or alcohol abuse, criminal involvement, self-mutilation and/or suicide.

2001 Lost Innocents: Righting the Record – Report on Child Migration

 This inquiry by the Commonwealth Parliament’s Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs was concerned with the impact of migration schemes on child migrants in institutions in Australia. The Committee received evidence of shocking physical and sexual abuse and assault perpetrated by those charged with their day-to-day care. Sexual assault was perpetrated by a range of persons including priests at the institution, members of families to whom children were sent on holidays or to work, workers at the institution, regular visitors to the institution, and also in some institutions by other older children.

Children who were sexually abused and assaulted referred to their shame, about carrying this guilt around for a lifetime and never being able to confide in a family member, any detail of their childhood or adolescent experiences. Sexual assault as a child has the most damaging impact throughout life. Abused children often develop personal problems of lack of trust and confidence, anxiety, depression and suicidal tendencies, and an inability to establish and maintain personal relationships.

 2004 Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians who Experienced Institutional or Out-of-Home Care as Children

 This inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs was concerned with mainly non-indigenous Australian-born children who suffered under institutional care. It focused on children who were in institutional and out-of-home care, mainly from the 1920s until the 1970s when deinstitutionalisation began to see large institutions replaced by smaller residential homes, foster care or other options such as placements with families for accommodating children in need of out-of-home care.

The Committee received hundreds of graphic and disturbing accounts about the treatment and care experienced by children in out-of-home care. Their stories outlined a litany of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, criminal physical and sexual assault. Their stories also told of neglect, humiliation and deprivation of food, education and healthcare. The overwhelming response as to treatment in care was the lack of love, affection and nurturing that was never provided to young children at critical times during their emotional development.

The long-term impact of a childhood spent in institutional care is complex and varied. However, a fundamental, ongoing issue is the lack of trust and security and lack of interpersonal and life skills that are acquired through a normal family upbringing, especially social and parenting skills. A lifelong inability to initiate and maintain stable, loving relationships was described by many care leavers who have undergone multiple relationships and failed marriages. Many cannot form trust in relationships and remain loners, never marrying or living an isolated existence.

The legacy of their childhood experiences for many has been low self-esteem, lack of confidence, depression, fear and distrust, anger, shame, guilt, obsessiveness, social anxieties, phobias, and recurring nightmares. Many have tried to block the pain of their past by resorting to substance abuse through lifelong alcohol and drug addictions. Many turned to illegal practices such as prostitution, or more serious law-breaking offences which have resulted in a large percentage of the prison population being care leavers. Care leavers harbour powerful feelings of anger, guilt and shame, have a range of ongoing physical and mental health problems, and struggle with employment and housing issues.

The Committee considered that there has been wide scale unsafe, improper and unlawful care of children, a failure of duty of care, and serious and repeated breaches of statutory obligations. The Committee further considered that many comments in recent years by governments, churches and care providers reveal a complete lack of understanding of or acceptance of responsibility for the level of neglect, abuse and assault that occurred in their institutions.

2005 Protecting Vulnerable Children: A National Challenge

 This inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs was also into children in institutional or out-of-home care. Unlike its 2004 inquiry, it focused on contemporary foster care issues, contemporary government and legal framework in which child welfare and protection issues operate, children and young people with disabilities in care, and children and young people in juvenile justice and detention centres.

The Committee concluded that a spate of more recent reports for a number of States and Territories reveal crisis-ridden child protection systems that are under-resourced, under-funded, under-staffed resulting in a high turnover of over-worked (burnt-out) and often inexperienced workers. They have also found that the crisis-ridden systems have resulted in children at risk not being adequately protected.

The Committee also concluded that the evidence indicates very disturbing trends in out-of-home care: that the number of children entering the system is increasing and children have increasingly complex problems as a result of extremely damaging family situations. Indigenous children are over-represented in the out-of-home care system, with indigenous children being six times more likely to be in out-of-home care than non-indigenous children. Often, the out-of-home system is unable to provide adequate care for these high-care children. This is exacerbated by multiple placements, multiple changes to caseworkers, lack of adequate after-care services, and children returning to abusive situations.

In The State of Western Australia v Barber [2026] WASCA 130, the full bench of the Western Australian Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the District Court of Western Australia’s award of almost $2.85 million in damages to a person who was a child that had been returned to an abusive situation.

2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

 On 12 November 2012, the Prime Minister announced she would recommend to the Governor-General that a royal commission be appointed to inquire into institutional responses to child abuse. On 11 January 2013, the Governor-General issued Letters Patent appointing six Commissioners. They presented their final report on 15 December 2017.

The final report consists of 17 volumes and an executive summary distilled over five years from 1,344 written and accounts by 7,981 survivors of child sexual abuse in 8,013 private sessions. In private sessions up to 31 May 2017, the Royal Commission heard from 6,875 survivors of child sexual abuse in institutional contexts, as well as their family members, carers and supporters and other children in institutions where the abuse took place. By the end of the Royal Commission, the Commissioners had heard about 3,489 institutions where they were told child sexual abuse had occurred.

One of the Royal Commission’s findings in relation to disclosure was cited in the decision of DB (a pseudonym) v The State of Western Australia [2025] WADC 60, the subject case of the above unsuccessful appeal by the State of Western Australia. In our next article, we describe the Royal Commission’s findings about survivors’ experiences of disclosing child sexual abuse and the factors that affect a victim’s decision whether to disclose, when to disclose and who to tell.