AUSTRALIA
7 News
AAP
BY NEDA VANOVAC
September 23, 2014
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.
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