The Royal Commission into child sex abuse has begun investigating allegations of sexual abuse of asylum seeker children in Australia’s detention centres, making the Department of Immigration and Border Protection the first federal government department to be investigated by the commission.
The commission has served the department with “notices to produce”, signaling it will be conducting an inquiry into the allegations of abuse.
The investigation was sparked by a recent Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry, which uncovered 44 instances of sexual abuse of children, and new evidence produced this week pointing to an additional 28 incidents of abuse.
Human Rights Commission president professor Gillian Triggs referred the allegations to the national royal commission when they came to light. The commission is now in the early stages of its investigation into the department, which may widen to directly target Australia’s detention centres.
The commission is unable to investigate allegations on Nauru or Manus Island as they fall outside its jurisdiction, but will investigate detention centres within Australia. The beginnings of the inquiry were confirmed in a letter from the commission’s chairman Justice Peter McClellan to Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
The letter confirmed that “alleged child sexual abuse in Australia’s immigration detention centres is currently being considered” by the commission.
“However, I can indicate that although detention centres on the Australian mainland or Australian territories are within the jurisdiction of a royal commission, the commission is of the view that it cannot investigate events that occur within another country,” Justice McClelland wrote.
The commission may choose to proceed by calling a public hearing on the matter, which would see the Attorney-General’s Department representing the Commonwealth in an extensive investigation intoevidence surrounding the department’s response to reports of sexual abuse of children.
If a hearing is called, the immigration minister, former ministers and department staff may be called to give evidence to thecommission about the department’s handling of these reports.
The department said it is “fully co-operating” with the commission’s inquiry and has already provided information requested.
“Refugee children are already extremely vulnerable and the fact that some of them have been subjected to further abuse and assault is sickening and must be exposed,” Senator Young said of the commission’s inquiry.
The commission’s decision to investigate sexual abuse in detention centres comes after months of attacks directed at Professor Triggs from senior members of the federal government over her decision to investigate Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.
Both the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General made comments implying that Professor Triggs had created the Human Rights Commission’s report into detention centres as a direct attack on this government. The attacks from the government continued to mount until she was allegedly offered an inducement to resign by the Attorney-General’s department.
But this week Triggs has been defiant. Not only has she achieved her goal of having the abuse of children in detention investigated by the powerful royal commission, she also sent a powerful message to the government at a conference in Canberra: I’m not going anywhere.
She told the She Leads conference that being attacked by the federal government over her inquiry was the low point of her decorated 47 year legal career – but that it wasn’t going to stop her from seeing out her five year appointment as the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission.
“So it was an extraordinary experience and one which I think was the lowest point of my professional career. But it’s one that I’m absolutely determined to manage my way through,” she said.
She also said she is not phased by the government’s attacks because she knows that in calling the inquiry into children in detention, she was doing exactly what was required of her in her role.
“Now, no human rights commission in the world could have turned its back on the number of children held in prolonged and indefinite and mandatory detention as asylum seekers,” she said.
“So as far as I was concerned I was simply doing my job according to the law.”
Triggs left the conference with a resounding message: Speak up, get your facts straight, be willing to take the hard knocks but most of all, stay in the game.