Redress Scheme Abuse: When Evidence Is Ignored, Injustice Reigns

Stop the Redress Scheme Abuse: Redress Must Deliver Justice for Survivors and Fairness for Institutions

Questions surround the National Redress Scheme’s assessment process, with credible institutional evidence being ignored, undermining trust and fairness.

Trust in government institutions is at an all-time low. The temperature of the rhetoric in public debate is increasing.

Part of the reason for both these phenomena is that people feel they are not being heard.

As a former state MP in Western Australia, and as a church leader, I am utterly frustrated and angry at how the National Redress Scheme is abusing institutions that signed up in good faith.

A Scheme Designed to Deliver Justice

Let me be clear: I am fully supportive of the intent of the National Redress Scheme. The intention was that those who suffered sexual abuse while in the care of an institution, could receive redress without going through a civil litigation process.

Compensation was to be awarded if the abuse “is reasonably likely to have occurred”. So far, so good.

The problem is that payments are being awarded even when the evidence shows it could not possibly have happened in the context of the alleged institution.

Let me give an example: An applicant for redress lodged a claim asserting that in the mid-1970s he attended a particular church’s Christmas school holiday program where he was anally raped each day by one of the adult male leaders. The complainant also provided the title and the first name by which this male leader was allegedly known. (I can’t give more details due to the privacy provisions of the NRS legislation.)

The church was allowed to respond to this claim. It provided concrete evidence that the church’s holiday programs were only ever run in the September school holidays, and never over the Christmas holidays. In addition, these programs were run exclusively by women. There were no men involved!

The church provided the names and mobile phone numbers of the women who ran the school holiday programs in the 1970s, so that the assessor could speak with them to verify that no males were involved. In addition, there was no one associated with the church with the first name that the complainant claims was his abuser. Moreover, the title that the applicant claims was used for his abuser was never used in that denomination.

When Evidence Is Ignored, Fairness Fails

Despite the NRS legislation requiring the assessor to determine whether there is a “reasonable likelihood” that the abuse occurred in the context of the institution named by the applicant, no attempt was made to contact the women involved in running the program.

How an assessor can determine that there is a reasonable likelihood that a boy attending a program run exclusively by women, could be daily raped by an adult male leader is baffling. That conclusion can only be reached by ignoring the evidence.

This small church is now expected to pay over $100,000 in compensation to the claimant.

Naturally, they are outraged. They feel abused by the very organisation that was supposed to provide redress for abuse. Their confidence in government institutions has been shattered.

Sadly, this is not an isolated case. One small denomination has had four other claims lodged against it, where the evidence provided by the church demonstrated conclusively that the abuse could not have happened in the context of that church. In one case, the alleged abuser was not part of the church community till years later.

Another case involves a female who claims to have boarded with a church family for seven years and attended the church with them every week, where she asserts the pastor abused her nearly every week. But says she can’t remember any of their names! She had an uncommon first name. There was a girl of the same age who had the same first name as the applicant. This lady says there was definitely no one in the church who had the same name as herself.

Misattribution and the Complexity of Trauma

It is well known that traumatic experiences can affect the way memories are encoded, stored and recalled. Survivors sometimes retain vivid and reliable memories of abusive acts while experiencing greater difficulty recalling who actually abused them as well as the contextual details of when and where the abuse occurred. This can result in what is known as “misattribution”. But it seems the assessors are totally unaware of this complicating factor when considering applications for redress.

I have made a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Implementation of the National Redress Scheme Inquiry into the continuing operations of the National Redress Scheme, but the report fails to address the issue of misattribution and the failure of assessors to take seriously the evidence provided by organisations. The Eighth Anniversary Review of the NRS, to which I also made a submission, is yet to report. I have written to the minister responsible for the NRS, and received a response that failed to address the issue.

A growing number of churches are withdrawing from the NRS because they refuse to engage in what they see as an abusive sham process. It is time for NRS assessors to do their job properly and stop abusing organisations that signed up to the NRS in good faith.

While such abuse continues, it will be hard to lower the temperature of political debate and rebuild trust in government institutions.

Image courtesy of Adobe.

ODM Daily Commentary

Let’s be honest: This is a scandal hiding in plain sight, and the Church must speak. The National Redress Scheme was established to bring justice to survivors of sexual abuse—a noble and necessary goal. But what the article describes is not justice. It is a bureaucratic travesty. A small church is being forced to pay over $100,000 for abuse that could not possibly have happened on its premises, during a program it never ran, by a man who never existed. Evidence was provided. Witnesses were named. Phone numbers were offered. And the assessor ignored it all. That is not “reasonable likelihood.” That is a miscarriage of justice.

Scripture is uncompromising about the sanctity of truth and the sin of false witness. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16). “A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape” (Proverbs 19:5). The Ninth Commandment does not have an exception clause for trauma, good intentions, or government schemes. When a system ignores evidence and awards compensation based on claims that are demonstrably impossible, it is not protecting the vulnerable—it is punishing the innocent and rewarding falsehood. And the Church, of all institutions, must not be silent while this happens.

But there is a deeper spiritual issue here. The article rightly notes that trauma can affect memory and lead to “misattribution”—a genuine and complex reality. Survivors of abuse deserve compassion, care, and a fair hearing. But compassion without truth is not compassion at all; it is sentimentality that ultimately harms everyone, including genuine survivors. The moment we decide that evidence does not matter, that institutions must pay regardless of facts, and that allegations must be believed simply because they are made, we have abandoned justice. And where justice is abandoned, trust collapses—which is exactly what the article describes.

The Church must respond with both compassion and courage. We must care for those who have genuinely suffered abuse. We must not minimise the horror of sexual abuse or the lifelong damage it causes. But we must also defend the innocent, insist on evidence, and demand that the National Redress Scheme do what it was designed to do: deliver justice, not abuse institutions that signed up in good faith. “Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). That command cuts both ways. It means protecting survivors. It also means protecting churches from false claims.

The growing number of churches withdrawing from the NRS should be a warning to the government. A scheme that punishes good-faith institutions and ignores exculpatory evidence will not long survive. And a nation that abandons fair process in the name of compassion will find itself with neither compassion nor justice. “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face” (Psalm 89:14). Mercy without truth is not mercy. It is chaos. It is time for the National Redress Scheme to do its job properly—and for the Church to demand it.

Keywords

National Redress Scheme, NRS abuse, institutional abuse, survivors, compensation, false allegations, misattribution, trauma and memory, evidence ignored, church institutions, small denominations, government scheme, Exodus 20:16, Proverbs 19:5, Isaiah 1:17, Psalm 89:14, false witness, justice and truth, compassion without truth, Christian response, institutional fairness, government trust, legal reform, wake-up call