On 19 Feb 2024 individuals who had made submissions which they were happy to be made public, were surprised to receive the following email from the Beaumaris Board of Inquiry. "Thank you again for your submission to the Board of Inquiry into historical child sexual abuse at Beaumaris Primary School and certain other government schools. A review of all submissions made to the Board of Inquiry has been completed. We acknowledge all victim-survivors, secondary victims and community members who made submissions. Your experiences, views and perspectives have been invaluable to our work.
Following careful consideration, the Inquiry will not be publishing submissions received from individuals. Many of these submissions were shared confidentially, while others were shared anonymously but included information that is unable to be safely and appropriately de-identified. In other cases, the submissions are unable to be published due to legal, privacy, safety or wellbeing reasons.
We recognise that child sexual abuse is a devastating crime that can have profound and life-long effects on victim-survivors and their families, friends, loved ones and communities. If you would like to have a confidential discussion about your submission or services and supports available to you, please contact us on (03) 8301 0102. You can also visit our website for a list of free support services available to victim-survivors and secondary victims of past abuse, violence, or childhood trauma.
Thank you for your valuable time and participation in this process."
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This raises several questions.
- Why was the Royal Commission (Royal Commission) into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse able to safely redact submissions from individuals and publish them, but the Beaumaris Board of Inquiry could not? Link to the Royal Commission submissions, which includes from individuals, below.
- Why was the Board of Inquiry only able to publish five submissions made by organisations? Link below:
https://www.beaumarisinquiry.vic.gov.au/submissions
Given the Royal Commission was able to safely redact submissions from organisations and publish them? - Why did the Beaumaris Board of Inquiry leave it so late to inform people their individual submissions would not be made available, as they had wished?
- Was the very small budget of $5.4 million provided by the Victorian Government, inadequate? Did the Beaumaris Board of Inquiry simply run out of money?
- Where are all these submissions made by individuals and organisations that haven't been published, now? Did the Board of Inquiry staff destroy them, or have they been handed over to the Victorian Government? Are all these submissions even referenced in the Board of Inquiry Report footnotes?
- Will all those documents referenced in the Board of Inquiry Report footnotes, be made available to the public? As the Final Report only includes snippets of submissions and transcripts?
These are questions we have raised with the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse created a public online Document Library, of submissions, transcripts, case studies, exhibits and reports (image at the top of this update). Transcripts of sessions were de-identified and shared, and this has continued to be added to as any related legal proceedings have been completed.
"The Royal Commission’s Terms of Reference required that its work did not prejudice current or future criminal or civil proceedings. For this reason, the Commissioners delivered an un-redacted and a redacted version of certain reports and recommended that the un-redacted version should be tabled and published at the conclusion of the relevant criminal proceedings. The below un-redacted versions were tabled on 7 May 2020."
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/previously-redacted-reports
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https://www.facebook.com/CSA3193/