Cycle of abuse in Australian Defence Force likely to continue, commission told

A damaging cycle of abuse within the Australian Defence Force is likely to continue without a circuit breaker, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has been told.

The former chair of the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce DART and retired judge Len Roberts-Smith continued his testimony on the eighth day of hearings in Townsville on Wednesday.

DART was established in 2012 to help complainants who had been hurt, harassed, and bullying in the ADF prior to April 2011.

Mr Roberts-Smith told the commission how senior personnel exercised their power to inflict abuse on junior recruits at the Australian Defence Force AcademyDefence Force Academy ADFA and other defence training facilities.

Junior soldiers are not in a position to challenge the giving of the order but they do know that if they don't obey an order they are going to be in serious trouble. The commission heard that the taskforce had found sexual abuse in the ADF was almost exclusively experienced by women.

In my recollection, the majority were more of an exercise of power and abuse in the context of hazing and initiation by multiple offenders, according to Roberts-Smith.

The commission was told that the number of sexual abuse incidents reported to DART had declined since peaking in the 1970s.

It was still widespread in the Navy, which made up 41 per cent of cases despite only 25 per cent of the ADF forces.

The DART report also found more than 60 alleged perpetrators still serving in the ADF when it handed down its report in 2014, the commission heard.

Commissioner Peggy Brown told the commission that it was hard not to think there was just a fundamental failure by Defence to protect these young people.

Roberts-Smith said that was the obvious conclusion that is reflected in the taskforce's report. I think the potential continuing ramifications are that the cycle continues.

Roberts-Smith told the commission that DART had raised the idea of introducing an abuse complaints mechanism that sits outside the ADF chain of command.

Roberts Smith said that it could be an avenue for them to go to the Defence Force Ombudsman.

He does not currently handle administrative reviews, but he could be given a function of receiving complaints of abuse. During its tenure, DART made a number of interim and quarterly reports about its findings, but the commission heard that they were not easily accessible to the public.

When I came to prepare for the royal commission, I was disturbed to find that I had great difficulty getting the taskforce reports on the web or anywhere else, and there are very few hard copies available, Mr Roberts-Smith said.

That was a very unfortunate state of affairs and one that I think should be rectified.

The hearings will conclude in Townsville on Thursday before resuming in Hobart in August.