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General Solicitor Una Jagose.
The Attorney General has denied that prolonged legal action was used as a weapon to wear down survivors of abuse in state care seeking compensation.
The government’s chief legal adviser, Una Jagose QC, has worked at the Crown Law office for 18 years and said Monday that it was important for her to face the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in state care.
He said his role was to explain, “not necessarily defend”, the Crown’s responses to survivors, but denied that the Crown had used lengthy court procedures to wear down litigants.
“I have to accept that that might be how they feel, though,” he said.
He spoke of the Crown’s responsibility to be fair in addressing survivor cases for compensation, given the state resources available to the Crown.
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LAWRENCE SMITH / Things
Judge Coral Shaw, chair of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Abuse in State Care.
Many survivors have told the Commission that they had fought for years to obtain compensation for the historic abuse.
Lake Alice survivor Leonie McInroe was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy and drugs as punishment at the hands of Dr. Selwyn Leeks as a teenager.
She was in the gallery to see the evidence from Jagose on Monday.
McInroe told the Commission in September that the Crown had intentionally delayed legal action through various legal tactics.
“I felt like the Crown was treating me with the cruel indifference and cruelty that Dr. Leeks had. Only worse. It was worse because he expected fairness and justice from the Crown. “
Another survivor, Joan Bellingham, was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy for her sexuality and said her fight for redress was almost as bad as the abuse itself.
She said that at one point an ACC staff member suggested that the scars on her scalp caused by electrodes could have been cigarette burns.
“I constantly felt like I was fighting uphill to get people to recognize me or believe that what I was saying actually happened.”
Jagose said there was some criticism of the Crown’s legal tactics.
“I would not call them tactics, I would call them steps.”
He said Crown Law was spending public money and had to act responsibly.
Jagose said some had suggested that the Crown could make more payments to more people if it did not spend as much on legal costs.
“The Crown has to defend itself. He also has to defend points in the law ”.
Jagose said that in some cases Crown employees accused of abuse had died when the legal action for compensation was filed.
The Attorney General also addressed criticism of the Crown opposing the removal of the names of witnesses in a civil case, some of whom had filed complaints of sexual abuse.
He said part of the Crown’s reasons for objecting appeared to be that naming witnesses “would probably discourage others from coming forward.”
Jagose said that this was not a good basis for the Crown to oppose the removal of names.
“I can’t even justify that … If that’s what was said, it’s hideous.”
He said that in the last decade Crown Law has changed the way it responds to allegations of historical abuse.
