The WA Greens are calling on the Cook Labor Government to immediately drop their appeal against Dion Barber. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Barber was awarded $2.85 million in compensation by the District Court for repeated sexual abuse he suffered while in state care during the 1980s and 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jess Beckerling MLC, Greens WA spokesperson for Sexual Violence:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDion Barber has survived extreme levels of abuse and has shown extraordinary courage in repeatedly coming forward to tell his story and seek relief and justice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe law was changed following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to provide for victim survivors to bring their cases to court. This was in recognition of how important it is that people are able to seek justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMr Barber is the first person whose case has been heard and compensation agreed following this important change to the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is staggering that the State Government would appeal this decision. It should acknowledge it has made a mistake and drop the appeal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat does it say to victim survivors about how they will be treated in court by the State? This was supposed to be a chance for justice and a step towards recovery, not another exercise in re-traumatising survivors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis was the wrong move. The State has made a series of egregious decisions in its duty to Mr Barber and it should absolutely have recognised that and apologised by now. This appeal must be dropped.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The WA Greens are calling on the Cook Labor Government to immediately drop their appeal against Dion Barber. Mr Barber was awarded $2.85 million in compensation by the District Court for repeated sexual abuse he suffered while in state care during the 1980s and 1990s. Jess Beckerling MLC, Greens WA spokesperson for Sexual Violence:\u00a0 \u201cDion … Continue reading “State Government should drop appeal against Dion Barber”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35349,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35348\/revisions\/35349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}