Sustained, historical cases of child sexual abuse committed in the ACT could soon be more easily prosecuted, after the government introduced new laws to enact Royal Commission recommendations.
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A raft of changes to sexual offences against children were introduced into the Legislative Assembly on Thursday, with debate on the bill adjourned to until the Assembly resumes next year.
The bill is the first legislative response from the territory government to the five-year-long Royal Commission, which heard thousands of reports of child sexual abuse across the nation before releasing its final report in August.
Attorney-General Gordon Ramsay said the failings exposed by the Commission had been so heinous it was difficult to comprehend and the amendments would give effect to its key recommendations.
"The amendments give effect to the model provision recommended by the Royal Commission so that the criminal act is constituted by the ongoing sexual relationship, rather than individual sexual acts," he said.
"This allows for prosecutions in a manner consistent with the ways in which victims remember abuse and has retrospective effect in recognition of the fact that delay is a typical, rather than a peculiar, feature of child sexual abuse," he said.
That offence would mean people accused of such offences could face charges related to repeated but largely undistinguishable sexual offences, rather than on each individual act.
It has been a critical issue exposed during the Commission, as many childhood victims, coming forward as adults decades later, could not remember the specifics of each individual act, or were not easily able to separate memories of different acts given the effects of the abuse.
The bill also adds two new "grooming" offences to criminalise the non-electronic grooming of a child and grooming of persons other than a child.
It would also exclude the "good character" of a child sex offender as a measure relevant to sentencing, where such a character enabled the offending - such as a person in a position of trust who abused that trust in order to commit the offence.
But the bill will also make a number of other changes to criminal laws, including to expand the Children's Court jurisdiction to all for circle sentencing for indigenous children.
That proposed measure would create a new court, essentially a childrens' version of the adult Galambany Court, which Mr Ramsay said would be called the Warrumbul court, the Ngunnawal word for 'youth'.
Other changes respond to a recent controversial case that went to the High Court involving an inmate at Alexander Maconochie Centre, child sex offender Aaron James Holliday, who attempted to get another inmate to organise the kidnapping of witnesses outside the prison.
The High Court ultimately found Holliday not guilty, as the crime had not happened, and Holliday could also not be found guilty of inciting the crime, because the other inmate did not act on his instructions.
Mr Ramsay told the Assembly the case had highlighted a "clear gap in the ACT's criminal code, and while the other inmate did nt go through with the crime, it was clearly behaviour the community expects to be criminalised.
Another change in the bill would ensure that a good behaviour order issued by the courts could not be served at the same time as a parole order issued by the territory's sentence administration board.
