Shortcut: How Child Abuse Is Silenced by Legal Loopholes
Australian True Crime
Meshel Laurie
4.6 • 979 Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a "Shortcut" episode. It’s a shortened version of this week’s more detailed full episode, which is also available on our feed.
Content warning: this conversation includes discussion of child sexual abuse. Support services can be found further down in these show notes.
Lawyer and advocate Judy Courtin discusses her work representing survivors of institutional child abuse and how legal technicalities have long protected powerful institutions.
You can visit Judy Courtin's website here.
For Support:
Lifeline on 13 11 14
13 YARN on 13 92 76 (24/7 crisis support phone line for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples)
1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732
Blue Knot Helpline: 1300 657 380
CREDITS:
Host: Meshel Laurie
Guest: Judy Courtin
Executive Producer: Matthew Tankard
Editor: Michael Tankard
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before we begin today's episode of Australian true crime, I want to tell you about a new project |
| 0:04.5 | we've been working on behind the scenes. It's called She Matters. It's a new podcast from |
| 0:10.2 | award-winning journalist and femicide researcher Shirel Moody. Each week, Shirel speaks with |
| 0:15.3 | families of women and children killed in Australia, sharing who they were, the joy they brought, |
| 0:21.9 | and the love they left behind. She Matters isn't a true crime podcast. It's about lives lived, lives loved and lives |
| 0:28.7 | lost. She Matters is produced by Dashmade podcasts in association with bravecasting media. |
| 0:35.7 | She Matters is available wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:39.9 | The following podcast contains accounts of child sexual assault. |
| 0:44.2 | Listener discretion is advised. |
| 0:51.3 | Judy Curtin is a lawyer and an advocate for victims of institutional child abuse in Australia. |
| 0:57.9 | She's at the coal face of the ongoing battle for recognition and restitution for victims, |
| 1:02.9 | and she joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about the current landscape in that area. |
| 1:08.9 | This is Australian True Crime. |
| 1:10.5 | We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created. landscape in that area. This is Australian true crime. |
| 1:14.9 | We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, |
| 1:18.5 | the Wurundri Woi Wurang people of the Koolan Nation. |
| 1:31.5 | An institution or organisation, we're talking religious institutions. It could be a parish and a diocese. It could be a school. It could be an altar boy in a church. It could be a basketball coach who's a |
| 1:39.5 | volunteer. It could be a lay teacher in a private school, a public school, secondary, primary. |
| 1:46.8 | It could be in the Boy Scouts, the Girl Guides, it could be Salvation Army. |
| 1:53.8 | Any organisational institution that has the care of children, sadly, attracts criminals, pedophiles. |
| 2:02.8 | Yeah. |
| 2:03.3 | During our Royal Commission, which, as you probably know, went for five years with five |
... |
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