Gender-based violence in out-of-home care

[Exceprt] Since the 1990s, a series of inquiries into historical institutional abuse across the Western world have consistently disclosed high levels of physical and sexual violence experienced by children living apart from their families. Many conclude that such abuse has been endemic across the sector for many years. Drawing primarily on survivor testimony, these inquiries focus on establishing why abuse occurred and on making recommendations to prevent such abuse in the future. While they attempt to document the prevalence of abuse, few apply a gender lens to their analysis. This chapter aims to fill that gap, using the key Australian inquiries into historical institutional abuse over the past half century to examine the degree to which the experience of physical and sexual violence in out-of-home care has been gendered.