AUSTRALIA
Border Mail
A WOMAN who recently gave testimony of sexual and physical abuse at a long-closed Albury-Wodonga girls’ home yesterday slammed a $6.7 million funding cut to a related royal commission.
Five weeks ago Rhonda recounted the horrors of her time at St John’s Orphanage to a commissioner in Melbourne.
Rhonda (who did not wish to use her full name) now fears the funding transfer will prevent many others from telling the stories they have had to carry throughout their lives.
The Attorney-General’s Department has defended the redeployment last year of $4 million from the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse capital works budget — plus $2.7 million from a pool for witness legal costs — to the home insulation inquiry.
It said this would not affect the commission’s operations.
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