By Thomas Oriti
Allegations of child sexual abuse at some of the country’s most respected hospitals will be examined at a royal commission that has begun hearings in Sydney.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is expected to hear from former patients allegedly molested by medical staff and volunteers in New South Wales and Victorian hospitals.
Representatives from the hospitals and their governing bodies will be called to give evidence in what could be one of the most disturbing hearing of the ongoing inquiry so far.
Merrilyn Walton, the first health care complaints commissioner in New South Wales, who served from 1993 to 2000, said the inquiry would give patients a voice.
“Patient’s voices have traditionally been excluded from looking at regulatory operations, and their voice is an important one. Their experience can teach us an awful lot,” said Professor Walton, who now lectures in medical education and patient safety at the University of Sydney.
“There’s still some fear of retribution, there’s still the ‘closed club’ about mandatory reporting. So I think what this does is exposes the extreme vulnerability of children to the extent that the system needs to pay attention to that.
“And if they don’t have the existing mechanisms in place, then they should put them in.
“So what I hope will happen is that when a complaint is made on behalf of a child, for example, that more attention is paid to that, because historically it’s been quite easy to dismiss their voice, easy to discredit, easy not to substantiate.
“So in those cases we need to be more attentive, more careful, more diligent.”
Nine alleged abuse victims to give evidence
The inquiry will hear from nine people who say they were abused in private medical practices and public hospitals.
The commission will begin with evidence from a number of people who had reported abuse to the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) by one particular medical practitioner in NSW.
The alleged perpetrators also include a psychologist who worked at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital in the 1960s and 20 years later as a volunteer at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.
Carolyn DeWaegeneire complained to the HCCC in 2007 about the former doctor Graeme Reeves who worked on the NSW far south coast.
He was eventually jailed after the district court found he had unnecessarily removed her genitals.
Ms DeWaegeneire has criticised the way the HCCC handled her case as an adult patient and she fears the response could be even worse for children.
“It’s the easiest thing to just put a blanket over the top and shove it under the ‘not to be disturbed’ drawer at the bottom at the back of the file. It’s so easy,” she said.
“Just ignore it and get rid of it. Don’t forget that a little one person cannot, on their own, fight.”
But Professor Walton said she was confident the HCCC is doing its job properly.
“When I was the director of the complaints unit and the health care complaints commissioner, there was no evidence of wanting to conceal complaints or not investigate complaints that should be investigated. Indeed, it was the opposite,” she said.
The HCCC declined AM’s request for comment, but a parliamentary committee found it had improved its operations after the initial complaints about Mr Reeves.
Commissioner Kieran Pehm will be called to give evidence before the royal commission.
Representatives from the NSW Medical Council and the state’s Health Department will also appear.
The CEO of the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Professor Christine Kilpatrick, released a statement guaranteeing that the revered institution was safe.
“We are compliant with every legislated safeguard, including working with children checks and mandatory reporting, and go beyond mandated regulation, with comprehensive policies, procedures and strict codes of conduct,” she said.