Redress Information

So I just want to say this is not legal advice so….

In response to hundreds of individuals coming out about abuse they had experienced as a child within institutions in Australia, in 2017 a Royal Commission occurred in regard to institutional child abuse (Aust Govt has also done Royal Commissions on First Nations deaths in custody for example) 

Anyway -  Some of the institutions that these people experienced abuse were:

Boys & girls homes

Foster care

Orphanages

Youth detention centres

Churches and church lead institutions

Schools and school run programs and organisations

Scouts & Girl Guides

Hospitals

Jails

Sporting Teams

After gathering a lot of information, asked lots of survivors to tell their story, the Royal Commission handed down recommendations to parliament to implement extra support and services for the survivors such as

Counselling

Housing

Help with whitegoods like fridges etc  

They also held a lot of institutions to task and many of those institutions signed up to acknowledge that many cases of abuse had occurred there - so instead of taking every person through a litigation process - they would just pay them out with a Redress settlement - this is where the Redress Scheme came from.  

I do not want to give any time frames- if the application is successful - you have to sign a piece of paper saying that you agree to never try to sue the institution again.  The payout is capped at $150K but we have never heard of anyone actually getting this amount - it is usually much MUCH lower, . This was all setup by the government 

What ATFJ can do to help you work out if redress is your best way forward, is take some details from you about what happened and reach out to one of our legal partners who specialise in institutional child abuse claims. Our Team is highly trained, some have lived experience and we are all very sensitive to the trauma these events can cause. Also, we only partner with legal teams that demonstrate care, sensitivity and respect toward our clients which includes pushing the matters forward as quickly as possible to minimise your stress.

It is free to have your first yarn with us and then the lawyers will talk about there fees once you have your first call - and what the legal partners do is assess your claim and give an experienced recommendation as to whether your claim is worth litigating (which means you have a good chance of getting more money than through Redress) or they will say “no - it is probably best to go through the Redress Scheme.

No time frames or dollar amounts- if the legal team thinks you have a civil claim - you stand an excellent chance of getting a much bigger outcome than if you just go to Redress.

Our Founders, Todd and Jacob Little, used lawyers to sue the institutions that failed to protect them and started this business of supporting and advocating for survivors with the money they got - it's our mission to help in every way possible.

Worst case scenario - if the lawyers say you don't have a claim - you can still go through the Redress route - but unfortunately -  this is due to you signing away the rights to take further action if you are unhappy with the outcome.