The head of the Department of Family and Community Services has pledged to change the way it deals with law suits from victims of child sex abuse after publicly apologising for the "defensive, adversarial" way victims of the Bethcar children's home were dealt with.
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Michael Coutts-Trotter told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that a "general counsel" position would be created to ensure that his department behaved as a "model litigant" when dealing with damages claims from victims of abuse, following a review of his department's actions in relation to the women of Bethcar.
It would also quickly and fairly determine whether the department was liable for the abuse suffered at state-run or state-funded institutions rather than dragging cases out, and swiftly provide written apologies as well as paying damages when liability was accepted.
"Our responsibility in cases like this is to simply believe people when they come to us, start from belief, [and] look for evidence to support what is being put to us," said Mr Coutts-Trotter who was appointed secretary of the department in 2012, after the Bethcar case had concluded.
Mr Coutts-Trotter acknowledged that this new policy was in stark contrast to the position his department and the Crown Solicitor's Office took with the 15 Aboriginal women who launched action against the department in 2006 over the severe abuse they suffered at Bethcar in the 1970s and 1980s.
The commission has heard that, under the direction of solicitor Evangelos Manollaras, the state government fought the Bethcar victims at every turn for 5½ years.
It refused to accept that a number of the women had ever been abused despite the perpetrator having been convicted and sent to jail. It also hatched a plan for secret surveillance, and sought to have the claims struck out on a technical point rather than engage in mediation.
Mr Coutts-Trotter apologised for his department's repeated breaches of its obligations to act as a model litigant during the legal battle, which re-traumatised the victims and ultimately cost taxpayers $3.7 million.
"We drifted into a defensive strategy and an adversarial strategy without carefully thinking through the fundamental issue: that we had liability, we had a responsibility to respond far more effectively and quickly than we did to the women and men of Bethcar," he said.
"If we had done that we would have gone to the departmental files and we would have discovered that we had an involvement here that went well beyond a narrow regulatory role with Bethcar.
"We had received allegations from young girls from Bethcar in March 1980. We would have discovered that there was information through victims compensation decisions that related to the women and men at Bethcar.
"We would have discovered that there was convictions and admissions in a court case, and would have very rapidly, I think, formed the view that we had a liability, we hadn't fully met that duty of care, and we would have moved to settlement."
The hearing continues.
