The Grace Tame Foundation, established by the Tasmanian-born survivor of child sexual abuse it is named after, has announced it is closing.<\/p>\n
In a statement posted to social media today, the foundation, formed in 2021, said “sustaining long-term funding for this work has become increasingly challenging”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“After careful consideration, the board has made the decision to close the foundation, with the process to be finalised in the coming weeks.”<\/p>\n
Ms Tame, a former Australian of the Year,<\/a> helped to champion law reforms and became an advocate for sexual abuse survivors in the wake of her own abuse by a school teacher when she was a student.<\/p>\n The foundation, which has four volunteer board members, including Ms Tame, said in its time, it had “helped drive landmark legal reforms, push for the harmonisation of survivor identification laws across Australia, advocate for anti-grooming education, and support hundreds of survivors seeking justice”.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Thanks to our campaign efforts, every jurisdiction in Australia has stopped naming the crime of ‘persistent child sexual abuse’ as a ‘relationship’.<\/p>\n “None of this would have been possible without Grace’s fierce and uncompromising advocacy for survivors, and her determination to ensure the experiences of those harmed as children could no longer be ignored.”<\/p>\n In March, Ms Tame said she had lost speaking engagements,<\/a> something she attributed to an “ongoing smear campaign” against her, following a speech at a protest in Sydney against the visit of Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, in which she led a chant of “globalise the intifada”<\/a>.<\/p>\n In its statement, the foundation’s board said the process to close would be “finalised in the coming weeks”.<\/p>\n