Abuse 'rife' at home for Aboriginal kids

Sky News
September 22, 2014

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2014/09/22/abuse--rife--at-home-for-aboriginal-kids.html

Aboriginal children in care at the Retta Dixon Home were flogged with belt buckles, sexually abused in cars and chained up in bed 'like a dog', a royal commission has heard.

Lorna Cubillo, now 78, was born at Banka Banka Station in Central Australia and was taken away from her family in 1947, when she was aged about eight.

She lived at the home, for Aboriginal children as well as some unmarried mothers, until she was about 16.

One of the girls in her dormitory used to have fits 'and was chained up with a dog chain to her bed', Ms Cubillo told the commission sitting in Darwin on Monday.

'She was fed with an enamel plate and cup, just like a dog, and often had bad chafing around her ankle where the chain would rub.'

Male staff at the home would often whip the children across the back of the legs with a leather strap for speaking to relatives through the fence.

'If you stepped out of line the punishment was very harsh ... Beatings happened a lot. Little things would get you into trouble, like speaking my language or being late for tea. Other punishments included being locked in your room without food,' Ms Cubillon alleged.

'I got into trouble because I was a little bit defiant but I used to think to myself, 'no, I'm not going to crack up and cry'. I cried on my own, away from them.'

Des Walters and his wife were the house parents of Ms Cubillo's dormitory. Mr Walters was physically abusive, Ms Cubillo told the commission.

'He flogged me that much that after a while it didn't hurt anymore,' she said.

'I never cried though, and because he wasn't winning he turned the strap around and used the buckle.

'Sometimes he would hit me over the face and head and I would bleed.'

He fondled her breasts, and touched her upper thigh in his car, she alleged.

'It was like I was being stalked and everywhere I went, he was there.'

Although a teacher at school seemed to suspect something was happening, Ms Cubillo never told anyone about the abuse because she was too scared it would get back to Mr Walters and he would beat her.

Once, after swimming on a Sunday despite knowing it was against the rules, she said Mr Walters hit her so hard with the buckle end of his belt that he cut her breast.

She eventually took court action against him in 1998 regarding the physical abuse, but never told anyone about the sexual abuse.

She thinks that was why she lost the case.

'I have tried to get over what happened to me but I just can't get past it,' she said.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse inquiry continues.