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2,400 claims of abuse in Australian military
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An inquiry into sexual and other abuse in the Australian military has received 2,400 complaints in its first year, its head said yesterday, admitting he was surprised and shocked.
Retired judge Len Roberts-Smith, who heads the Defense Abuse Response Taskforce established by the government after it received hundreds of complaints dating back decades, said some stories were horrific.
“Yes, I’ve been very surprised quite frankly at the range and the extent and nature ... of the 2,400 complaints or complainants who’ve come forward to the taskforce,” he told broadcaster ABC.
Roberts-Smith said some personnel allegedly involved in past incidents, including one in which female cadets were raped and sexually assaulted at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra in the 1990s, were still serving.
“There are some, I think, 12 people still serving in the defense force who are in some ways the subject of recommendations from the taskforce to the Chief of the Defense Force in relation to that,” he said.
Roberts-Smith said the taskforce, established to hear the complaints after a government report detailed hundreds of claims of sexual or other abuse in the forces, has revealed a culture of cover-up in some cases.
“Indeed, what we have seen in some instances is an allegation that is obviously rape being downgraded into misconduct, and treated summarily as a minor disciplinary matter.”
In recent years the military has been rocked by allegations of sexual abuse and cruel rituals, with a string of reviews sparked by the so-called Skype scandal in 2011 when footage of a young male recruit having sex with a female classmate was streamed online to other cadets without her knowledge.
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