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Questions surround the National Redress Scheme’s assessment process, with credible institutional evidence being ignored, undermining trust and fairness.

Trust in government institutions is at an all-time low.  The temperature of the rhetoric in public debate is increasing.

Part of the reason for both these phenomena is that people feel they are not being heard.

As a former state MP in Western Australia, and as a church leader, I am utterly frustrated and angry at how the National Redress Scheme is abusing institutions that signed up in good faith.

A Scheme Designed to Deliver Justice

Let me be clear: I am fully supportive of the intent of the National Redress Scheme.  The intention was that those who suffered sexual abuse while in the care of an institution, could receive redress without going through a civil litigation process.

Compensation was to be awarded if the abuse “is reasonably likely to have occurred”.  So far, so good.

The problem is that payments are being awarded even when the evidence shows it could not possibly have happened in the context of the alleged institution.

Let me give an example: An applicant for redress lodged a claim asserting that in the mid-1970s he attended a particular church’s Christmas school holiday program where he was anally raped each day by one of the adult male leaders.   The complainant also provided the title and the first name by which this male leader was allegedly known.  (I can’t give more details due to the privacy provisions of the NRS legislation.)

The church was allowed to respond to this claim. It provided concrete evidence that the church’s holiday programs were only ever run in the September school holidays, and never over the Christmas holidays.  In addition, these programs were run exclusively by women. There were no men involved!

The church provided the names and mobile phone numbers of the women who ran the school holiday programs in the 1970s, so that the assessor could speak with them to verify that no males were involved. In addition, there was no one associated with the church with the first name that the complainant claims was his abuser. Moreover, the title that the applicant claims was used for his abuser was never used in that denomination.

When Evidence Is Ignored, Fairness Fails

Despite the NRS legislation requiring the assessor to determine whether there is a “reasonable likelihood” that the abuse occurred in the context of the institution named by the applicant, no attempt was made to contact the women involved in running the program.

How an assessor can determine that there is a reasonable likelihood that a boy attending a program run exclusively by women, could be daily raped by an adult male leader is baffling. That conclusion can only be reached by ignoring the evidence.

This small church is now expected to pay over $100,000 in compensation to the claimant.

Naturally, they are outraged.  They feel abused by the very organisation that was supposed to provide redress for abuse. Their confidence in government institutions has been shattered.

Sadly, this is not an isolated case.  One small denomination has had four other claims lodged against it, where the evidence provided by the church demonstrated conclusively that the abuse could not have happened in the context of that church.  In one case, the alleged abuser was not part of the church community till years later.

Another case involves a female who claims to have boarded with a church family for seven years and attended the church with them every week, where she asserts the pastor abused her nearly every week. But says she can’t remember any of their names!  She had an uncommon first name. There was a girl of the same age who had the same first name as the applicant.  This lady says there was definitely no one in the church who had the same name as herself.

Misattribution and the Complexity of Trauma

It is well known that traumatic experiences can affect the way memories are encoded, stored and recalled. Survivors sometimes retain vivid and reliable memories of abusive acts while experiencing greater difficulty recalling who actually abused them as well as the contextual details of when and where the abuse occurred. This can result in what is known as “misattribution”. But it seems the assessors are totally unaware of this complicating factor when considering applications for redress.

I have made a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Implementation of the National Redress Scheme Inquiry into the continuing operations of the National Redress Scheme, but the report fails to address the issue of misattribution and the failure of assessors to take seriously the evidence provided by organisations. The Eighth Anniversary Review of the NRS, to which I also made a submission, is yet to report. I have written to the minister responsible for the NRS, and received a response that failed to address the issue.

A growing number of churches are withdrawing from the NRS because they refuse to engage in what they see as an abusive sham process.  It is time for NRS assessors to do their job properly and stop abusing organisations that signed up to the NRS in good faith.

While such abuse continues, it will be hard to lower the temperature of political debate and rebuild trust in government institutions.

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