Priest, teacher sex charges from 50 years ago, by Victoria Laurie, Australian (May 10, 2017)

Decades of alleged abuse at Aboriginal missions and children’s homes in Western Australia could now find their way into the courts, after charges were laid against a former teacher and a Catholic priest who worked at Wandering Mission, in remote forest east of Perth, more than 50 years ago.

The charges are some of the first against Aboriginal mission workers to arise directly from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which received hundreds of submissions from Aboriginal adults alleging abuse as children in WA institutions.

Yesterday a former teacher, who is now 82, was charged by WA Child Abuse Squad detectives with four counts of indecent dealings with a child under 13 years and three counts of unlawful and indecent assault on a female.

A Catholic priest who is now 78 was arrested in Melbourne and charged with sexually abusing four girls aged between eight and 15 years at the time.

The offences include one count of rape, six counts of indecent dealing with a girl under 13 and six counts of unlawful and indecent assault. The man will appear via videolink before the Perth Magistrates Court on June 22.

The offences allegedly occurred between 1965 and 1969 at Wandering Mission’s farm property run by the Pallottines, where children were placed by native welfare authorities as wards of the state. They were schooled and housed in dormitories until it closed in 1979.

Daydawn Advocacy Centre says it helped 170 Aboriginal people prepare their cases to the royal commission, including several people who suffered abuse at Wandering. In one case, a woman said her first recollection of sexual abuse was at the age of about seven, when one priest began to inappropriately fondle and touch her on a daily basis.

Another woman said she tried to commit suicide because of bad memories of being treated “like an animal” in the mission.

Social worker Betsy Buchanan said the abuse of many Aboriginal people taken into WA institutions as children had left a legacy that was handed down within families. “Until the commission hearings, people never realised the extent of it, as it was something never talked about,” she said.

Curtin University child-abuse researcher Hannah McGlade said the laying of charges was a turning point for victims who spent time in dozens of WA institutions that housed Stolen Generations children.

“It’s hard for children to make a complaint, and we have not sufficiently believed victims when they do.’’

In February, the royal commission published a report that drew attention to WA’s Benedictine Community of New Norcia, where many Aboriginal children were sent after being removed from their parents.

The report found 7 per cent of priests from all Catholic Church authorities who ministered from 1950 to 2010 across Australia were accused of child sexual abuse, but for the Benedictine Community of New Norcia the amount was more than three times that, at 21.5 per cent.

The royal commission has made a total of 2025 referrals to authorities, mainly police.

Yesterday a spokeswoman for the royal commission said: “We are aware of 127 prosecutions that have commenced as a result of these referrals.”