The federal government has just announced that it is spending $20m to support paedophiles, their friends and families. Where is the money for support services for victims & survivors of child sexual abuse, their families & supporters?

Six years have elapsed since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse delivered its Final Report with 409 recommendations.

Volume 9 of this report spoke to the urgent need for advocacy, support and therapeutic treatment and dedicated community support services for victims/survivors of child sexual abuse.

The Royal Commission observed that, “Our work has made us aware of the needs of victims and survivors of child sexual abuse in non-institutional settings and we identified gaps in services that affect all groups of survivors.”

The report went on to say, “Currently, service systems across Australia do not have the capacity to meet victims’ and survivors’ needs.”

Despite this, we are yet to see any significant investment in specialist services – not just for victims/survivors – but also for our families and supporters.

Recommendation 9.1: The Australian Government and state and territory governments should fund dedicated community support services for victims and survivors in each jurisdiction, to provide an integrated model of advocacy and support and counselling to children and adults who experienced childhood sexual abuse in institutional contexts.

Funding and related agreements should require and enable these services to:

a. be trauma-informed and have an understanding of institutional child sexual abuse b. be collaborative, available, accessible, acceptable and high quality c. use case management and brokerage to coordinate and meet service needs d. support and supervise peer-led support models.

BUT rather than prioritise funding for much-needed services for survivors, the federal government is spending $20m on establishing the following:

· A national child sexual abuse offending prevention service and,

· A national support service for non-offending family members and friends of child sexual abuse perpetrators.

We do not object to funding for these services. But we call on the Federal, State and Territory governments to provide funding for community-based specialist services to support all victims/survivors of child sexual abuse and our supporters.

Research shows that survivors of child sexual abuse are overrepresented in our hospitals, mental health and rehab facilities, jails, amongst those living on our streets, and most tragically, in suicide statistics.

We call on all governments to implement and fund the Royal Commission’s recommendations for services as a matter of urgency!