Child Rape Charges against Christian Aboriginal Mission Worker Philip Howard Street Dropped

By Laura Gartry
ABC News
September 29, 2016

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-29/child-sex-charges-dropped-against-christian-mission-worker/7888296

PHOTO: Hundreds of Aboriginal children were taken to the mission near Collie in the South West. (ABC Local: Meghan Woods)

Charges against a West Australian man accused of raping a child at a Christian mission in Western Australia's South West more than 40 years ago have been dropped.

Philip Howard Street, 74, pleaded not guilty to six child abuse charges stemming from his employment at the Roelands Christian Mission near Collie in 1974 and 1975.

The mission was once home to hundreds of Stolen Generations' children, with about 500 Aboriginal children housed there from the 1940s to the 1970s.

In February, Mr Street, from Albany, was charged by a specialist police taskforce set up to investigate claims that came to light during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

He had pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape and four counts of indecent treatment of a child under 14 in a Bunbury court in May.

The case was set for a trial listing hearing in the District Court in Bunbury on Wednesday but the charges were discontinued.