(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
The treatment of children in immigration detention could be investigated by the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse.
Victorian Children's Commissioner made the prediction at the launch of a scathing report by a group of churches into the detention of young unaccompanied asylum seekers.
Thea Cowie reports.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
The Royal Commission's has been shining a light on child sex abuse in Australian institutions, including churches.
But Victoria's Childrens' Commissioner, Bernie Geary, says soon its focus will shift to the treatment of unaccompanied children in immigration detention.
"Speaking to the people from the Royal Commission they have looked at their brief and it is a fact that they will be looking at the needs of these children."
The Royal Commission says in a statement to SBS that it's unable to confirm its lines of inquiry.
The Attorney General's office is not commenting on the matter.
But the prospect of the Commission looking at children in immigration detention is being welcomed by University of New South Wales human rights lawyer, Jennifer Whelan.
"I think the Royal Commission might turn the focus of the Australian public to what is happening. The reports from the office of the High Commission for Human Rights, they appear to be falling on deaf ears for a reason that I don't understand. I believe that the Australian public, if they turned their mind to what was happening to these children in a way that is full of empathy."
Meanwhile, church leaders have accused the goverment of state-sanctioned child abuse in immigration detention centres.
The allegation is made in an Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce report called "The Lonely Children".
It outlines claims of physical, sexual and psychological abuse suffered by unaccompanied minors in detention.
It also discusses the alleged sexual assault of a teenage boy on Nauru, and children on Christmas Island banging their heads and biting themselves.
The report's author, the Reverend Peter Catt, says children in detention are very vulnerable.
"Children are being interrogated without any system that gives them support. We've got children being exposed to an adult world. The aim is to deter other people from coming, and the children are, if you like, collatoral damage."
The Immigration Minister describes the claim of state-sanctioned child abuse as shocking and offensive.
In a statement, Scott Morrison says he is committed to ensuring children are protected from exploitation and abuse, and that he takes his guardianship responsibilities seriously.
Reverend Catt says the report's key recommendation is for the Minister be stripped of his role as guardian of asylum seeker children.
"Our deepest concern is that the Minister is both supposed to be the guardian of these children and yet he is also their jailor. Someone who is to be the guardian of the children has to have their children as their sole focus. The person who oversees the process can't execute that responsibility. "
Children's Commissioner Geary says he supports any moves to reduce what he considers a conflict of interest.
"I hear a child saying to me only recently that she didn't feel that she was special in the eyes of anyone and it seems to me that the lonely children that we're speaking about here certainly must feel that way."
It's a sentiment echoed by 17-year-old Bashir Yousufi, an orphaned Hazara refugee who spent a year in immigration detention.
"I didn't find there is someone who really cared about my health, who really cared about my education, or who cared about my physical like... I just spent almost one year with the stress, with the anxiety, with all the difficult things. There's no one."
Reverend Catt says the very churches now apologising for their own response to child abuse are warning the government could one day find itself in the same position, saying sorry for the treatment of children in immigration detention.
"The know it's happening, they've been told and therefore we have no hesitation in labelling the treatment of children in detention as state-sanctioned child abuse."
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