Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your views today. I'm sorry that I didn't have an opportunity to ask a question of Dr. Marshall, but perhaps we can follow up later.
I listened very intently to what each of you had to say. I appreciate your views in terms of rehabilitation and treatment of offenders, but what I didn't hear much or anything about, really, was the impact on victims of child sexual abuse.
As you may know, in recent days we have heard from some groups representing victims, including some who were victims themselves of child sexual abuse. They've told us some very difficult stories about the length of time it takes a child sex abuse victim to recover from the psychological trauma, if I could put it that way, they suffer when they're abused.
We heard one story about a young woman who was sexually abused for quite some length of time, I believe by a neighbour, and finally, after many years of keeping it locked up inside her, she came forward. She went through the difficult process of a prosecution and a trial. The offender was convicted and was immediately sent home to serve his conditional sentence in the house across the street from where she lived. She felt so aggrieved by this and so worthless due to the way the system responded to her that she attempted to commit suicide.
First of all, I'd like to ask each of you if you have any expertise in treating the victims of child sexual abuse. If you do have that kind of expertise, perhaps you could tell us about the long-term impact of these types of offences against child sex victims. What do you think the impact for them is if they see the offender not receiving any jail time whatsoever for the offence that's been committed against them?
Maybe Dr. Hannem could start.