A man repeatedly abused as a child at the Turana Boys’ Home and at a Salvation Army institution in Victoria has implored the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, not to exclude criminals who were victims of childhood sexual abuse from accessing a national redress scheme.

In October the government introduced national redress scheme legislation for childhood sexual abuse survivors. The legislation was referred to a Senate inquiry by the shadow social services minister, Jenny Macklin, over concerns about the opt-in nature of the scheme for institutions, the amount of redress available being inadequate, and anger that child abuse survivors who went on to commit serious crimes as adults would be barred from accessing redress.

In a submission to the inquiry, a man who chose to remain anonymous wrote that he became a ward of the state at age 13 and was molested at the Turana Boys’ Home by a staff member.

“After this happened my life spiralled out of control completely. It had been tough already, but after being molested at this government institution I felt shattered and wanted to commit suicide, and harmed myself a number of times,” he wrote.

“The only comfort I found at Turana was other inmates. I learned how to survive from older boys, which led to a life of crime. Already being a petty criminal at a young age, I continued on in that mode.”

He was sent to a youth detention facility at Turana, then sent to a Salvation Army institution at Bayswater.

“The abuse I suffered at Bayswater was mind-boggling and sent me right over the top,” he wrote. “I was committing major crimes at the age of 16. Armed robbery, assaults and more. All this while older people I’d been influenced by were committing shoplifting and burgling houses. I was angry, I didn’t care about my future.”

He was sentenced to serve time in a maximum-security facility and admitted to being a “pain in the arse” for the corrections authorities, attempting escape and assaulting prison officers. But these offences were born of the horrific trauma he had endured from the age of 13, the submission read.

“What I’m leading to here is the fact that I would have been all right in life if it hadn’t been for the sexual abuse committed against me, and rejections by the system, so how can you, Mr Turnbull, judge me as not being eligible for compensation on the grounds of criminality?” he wrote.



“I was a system-made problem.”

The exclusion of abuse survivors with serious criminal histories is one of the most contentious aspects of the proposed redress scheme. The proposal was not among the redress recommendations put forward by the child abuse royal commission, which handed down its final report in December.

A submission to the Senate inquiry from Penny Savidis, the head of institutional abuse at Ryan Carlisle Thomas lawyer, said the proposed exclusion of those with criminal convictions for sex crimes or any serious crime with a sentence of five years or more was “manifestly unjust”.



The royal commission conducted private sessions with 6,875 survivors as at 31 May 2017. Of those survivors, the commission recorded that 10.4% were in prison at the time of their private sessions.

“Assuming that each survivor was serving a prison sentence of five years or more, this would mean that 715 of those who attended private sessions with the commission would be excluded from redress on the basis of their convictions,” Savidis wrote.

“It is well documented that one of the effects of child sexual abuse can include imprisonment. Longitudinal studies have also shown that childhood abuse can considerably enhance the risk of survivors resorting to crime and violence later in life, although such criminal involvement tends to decline as they approach early adulthood.”

The inquiry is due to report its findings in March.