It is devastating to see that there are still institutions which fail to adequately acknowledge the devastation reaped on victims of child sexual abuse and be truly accountable.
Jehovah’s Witnesses reportedly continue to seek to deal with claims through an internal process. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse identified the systemic failure of closed organisations which were accountable only to themselves and effectively not accountable at all. This is precisely the culture of ongoing abuse, cover-up and revictimization which must stop now.
The Royal Commission strongly identified the need for external scrutiny and a National Redress Scheme to enable equity and fairness. Institutions who have failed to join the scheme are again failing those brutalised within them.
Institutions which believe they are different and special have a history of systemic layered abuse and compounded trauma to victims seeking justice and healing.
Not joining the scheme is utterly indefensible and institutions failing to do so must be sanctioned as the shame that victims so often carry sits squarely with them.
Dr. Cathy Kezelman AM is a medical practitioner, has the lived and living experience of child sexual and emotional abuse, and is the President and Executive Director of Blue Knot Foundation National Centre of Excellence for Complex Trauma and Deputy Chair of the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse.
Under her decades-long stewardship, Blue Knot Foundation has grown from a peer support organisation to a national centre of excellence combining a prominent consumer voice with that of researchers, academics and clinicians. She is a prominent voice in the media and at conferences and co-author of multiple seminal publications around complex trauma and trauma-informed practice. Cathy has spearheaded calls nationally for socio-political trauma-informed change and informed responsiveness to complex trauma.
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