Hiding behind a mask of respectability

And on the political front, if it turns out to be true that the NSW Labor Party heard rumours about Orkopoulos and did nothing, what does that say about politician’s priorities and cover-ups?

Australian research shows that one in four girls and one in seven boys are sexually abused before the age of 16.

The terrible tragedy about the charging of NSW Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Orkopoulos, whether true or not, is that Aboriginal communities fare far worse. Last year a Townsville Koori radio announcer told me that nine in ten local Koori children are sexually abused.

If this were bird flu, or any other plague which claimed lives and/or affected the lifelong health of its victims, and we knew was often passed from one generation to another, a state of national emergency would be declared.

Instead we continue to be in denial. We minimise both the extent of the crime and it’s long-term affect on victims. Because it’s ugly, we simply don’t want it to be true, so refuse to believe that our law-makers and gate keepers could possibly be involved in a systemic cover-up.

The only way to get to the bottom of it is through a national Royal Commission. The cost would be high, but the social and financial costs of allowing systemic abuses to continue, are enormous.

My own story illustrates the point.

My mother went to prison twice, two siblings suicided, we are three generations of sex workers, I had four suicide attempts before I was 20, one sister was a heroin addict and another psychotic.

I don’t think it’s coincidental that four of the six children in my family, as well as my mother, were sexually abused as children - all by different, unrelated perpetrators.

I was lucky enough to survive and become a finance journalist, author and volunteer raising awareness about the issue of child sexual abuse.

More typical is the son of my suicided sister. He has been in and out of prison on heroin-related burglaries for a decade. The cost to the community of the social fallout of my family’s child sexual abuse alone would stretch into the millions of dollars.

So, whatever the cost of a Royal Commission, the long-term financial cost of not having one, is higher. The personal cost and lives lost is less measurable.