“We Believe You” (Subject to Process)

The language of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was clear. Deliberately so.

I was meant to be believed.

Institutions were meant to be accountable.

Truth was meant to matter more than reputation.

Justice was not supposed to hinge on technicalities, time limits, or whether a traumatised adult could neatly reconstruct a childhood spent learning how to survive.

That was the moral reset. Or at least, that was the promise I heard.

Then the Royal Commission packed up its transcripts, published its recommendations, and left me to navigate a civil justice system that speaks an entirely different dialect.

Welcome to the Personal Injuries Proceedings Act (PIPA) reality. Same survivor.

Same harm. Radically different values.

Royal Commission language versus PIPA logic

The Royal Commission spoke in the language of systemic failure.

PIPA speaks in the language of procedural compliance.

The Commission asked: What did the institution know, and when did it know it?

PIPA asked me: Is your Notice compliant, and can you provide a reasonable excuse for the delay?

The Commission acknowledged that trauma fragments memory, distorts time, and silences children well into adulthood.

PIPA still required me to explain, often in forensic detail, why I didn’t act earlier. Preferably in a way that satisfied an insurer’s risk matrix.

The Commission recognised that abuse by authority figures is rarely a single incident and almost never disclosed promptly.

PIPA wanted dates, particulars, and causation framed as if this were a back injury sustained on a clearly marked Tuesday.

It’s not that the law denies trauma.

It’s that it doesn’t know what to do with it, so it squeezes it into a template built for accidents.

“Trauma informed” on paper, transactional in practice

Institutions now love the phrase trauma informed.

It appears in glossy policies, safeguarding frameworks, and carefully curated submissions.

But once I lodged a claim, the tone shifted.

I was no longer a witness to systemic failure.

I became a claimant.

A cost.

A file.

A risk to be managed.

My story was disassembled into parts that could be priced.

Psychiatric injury? Quantify it.

Loss of earning capacity? Prove it.

Impact on relationships? Relevant only if it increased damages.

What the Royal Commission framed as moral responsibility, PIPA reframed as exposure.

And this is where the contradiction sharpened.

Accountability without admission

The Royal Commission was explicit: apologies without accountability are hollow. Institutions were urged to acknowledge wrongdoing, not merely regret outcomes.

My PIPA settlement, however, like almost all of them, was resolved without any admission of liability.

That was not incidental. It was structural.

The institution could pay compensation while continuing to deny responsibility.

The harm was monetised.

The risk neutralised.

The public narrative carefully preserved.

I received funds.

The institution retained plausible deniability.

The system congratulated itself on resolution.

Justice, meanwhile, was quietly redefined as closure.

The Anglican problem, up close

For institutions like Anglican Church Southern Queensland, this duality is especially stark.

Publicly, there are acknowledgements of past wrongs. References to the Royal Commission. Commitments to child safety and cultural change.

Privately, through PIPA, I watched the same institution deploy insurers, forensic experts, and tightly managed disclosure processes designed to limit liability, not illuminate truth.

The Royal Commission spoke of institutional betrayal.

PIPA operationalised institutional self protection.

Both coexist quite comfortably, at least legally.

Morally, it’s much harder to square.

So what happened to the Royal Commission’s promise?

This is the uncomfortable part.

The Royal Commission changed the conversation, but it did not change the architecture of civil justice. I was invited back into a system that still privileges efficiency, finality, and risk management over truth telling.

The rhetoric said: We believe you.

The process said: Now prove it again, under rules that were never designed for this.

The Commission understood that child sexual abuse is not just an injury. It is a theft of development, safety, and identity.

PIPA understands injury.

It does not understand betrayal.

And until those two frameworks are reconciled, people like me will continue to live with the same dissonance: publicly validated by history, privately processed by a system that still treats our harm like a particularly complicated insurance claim.

If the Royal Commission was the reckoning, PIPA is the administrative afterparty.

Orderly.

Controlled.

And very careful not to spill anything that might stain the carpet.