Carers knew of abuse in home: inquiry

By Neda Vanovac
7 News
September 23, 2014

https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/25087247/children-raped-by-others-in-home-inquiry/

An inquiry has heard carers at a home for Aboriginal children knew their colleagues abused children.

Carers at a home for Aboriginal children knew and did nothing for years as their colleague sexually abused their charges, a royal commission has heard.

Former residents of the Retta Dixon home for mixed-race indigenous children in the Northern Territory said no authority could be trusted with allegations that house parent Donald Henderson had molested them.

A former house parent, identified only as AKR, said in a statement to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Darwin on Tuesday she was "absolutely devastated" when she heard the allegations against Mr Henderson, and reported him to home superintendent Mervyn Pattemore.

This led to a court case in 1976, but the inquiry heard that many children were too frightened to testify and Mr Henderson was acquitted due to a lack of evidence.

AKR said former house parent Margaret Clark had said to her about the abuse: "We knew about that. It was going on for years."

The children did not have a trusting relationship with the staff, former resident Veronica Johns said.

"There was no one we could talk to and be confident that they would make the bad things stop," she said.

Another witness, identified only as AKV, said he shared his stories of sexual abuse with a man he identified to the commission as the now well known Aboriginal human rights campaigner Dr Tom Calma when he visited the home in the early 1970s.

The man said he assumed Dr Calma was working for the NT welfare department, and seemed "pretty dismayed" by what he heard.

"He seemed almost helpless. Almost like, 'I'm taking notes and this is about as far as it's going to go'."

The witness said no authority spoke to him about the abuse again.

Kevin Stagg, 54, told the inquiry he was once taken to hospital after Mr Henderson raped him. He said he was not permitted to speak to hospital staff, who were told other children had done it.

The royal commission heard more than 70 charges were brought against Mr Henderson in 2002 but the trial was dropped a month before it was due to begin due to a lack of evidence.

Many stories focused on the strictness of punishments meted out to children for minor infractions.

Mr Stagg said he was "chained like a dog" to an outdoor water tap because he hid food he did not want to eat.

Witness AKV also recalled said his sister was tied to a clothesline, and had faeces rubbed in her face for looking at house parent Judy Fergusson the wrong way, who also once allegedly deliberately scalded her with hot water.

AKV said the children were confused by the contradiction between their pious Christian schooling and the brutality they endured.

"To this day I can't stand the sound of hymns," he said.

AKV said the children were thrilled when Cyclone Tracy destroyed the property in 1974, seeing it as a destruction of the missionaries brutalising them.

AAP has approached Dr Calma's office for comment.

The hearing will continue on Wednesday.