“The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.” – Richard K Morgan

THE Royal Commission into Child Abuse is coming to Canberra to rake over the coals of the abuse perpetrated here in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Most normal people won’t want to hear about it, or think about it. But for the sake of the children who suffered then, and for the sake of our children today, it’s important we bear witness to the testimony of the victims.

Now, I am a great admirer of the Catholic education system; for comparatively little cost, it provides an excellent education and the opportunities that flow from that.

However, no-one should allow their admiration of the many works of an institution to blind themselves to the horror of child sex abuse; that’s the kind of thinking the abusers like to foster.

As a teenager here in Canberra at that time I knew something horrible was happening in the Catholic schools.

Everyone in Canberra knew. We would make jokes about it. We would laugh that the reason Marist boys were so good at rugby was the practice they’d had running away from the brothers.

And yet, despite it being no secret, it would take long years and the victims reaching mature adulthood before their complaints could no longer be ignored.

This from a school that was sending young boys daily into the very bedroom of the monstrous John Chute on the basis that he didn’t like being woken by electrical alarm clocks.

Sarah Dingle worked for the ABC here in Canberra and has been covering the Royal Commission for Radio National. She talked to me about how hard it is to stay focused.

“Often it’s not a single story that gets to you, it’s the sheer accumulation of listening to so many horrible things in such a concentrated space of time,” Sarah said.

“You do become quite bleak so it’s important to keep an eye on how you’re going.”

I asked how she felt about the possibility that normal people will switch off the radio leaving a residual audience of predators taking notes on how not to get caught.

“It feels quite dispiriting to listen to horrible stuff, take on that weight, and then know that some people might not listen to the resulting product anyway,” she said.

“So you try to find an angle which people haven’t heard before, rather than just simply horror.

“It’s also important to note that although people may switch off when you say ‘child abuse’, journalism is also about the public record.

“You are adding to the public record of these events and that is worthwhile.

“This Royal Commission is a remarkable event and it deserves coverage.”

Which is why we all need to listen to the testimony of the abused from yesteryear, and to stand ready to hear it from the children of today.

And once we have borne witness? Sarah has some advice for that, too:

“Do something dissociative after, like exercise, take a bath, etcetera.”

John Griffiths is online editor for citynews.com.au