AUSTRALIA
Sky News
A horrifying picture of sustained physical and sexual abuse suffered for decades by mixed-race and Aboriginal children at a home in Darwin is unfolding at a national inquiry.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is sitting in Darwin to examine the Retta Dixon Home, which from 1946 until 1980, housed children of mixed descent as well as some unmarried mothers.
The home was run by the Aborigines Inland Mission (AIM).
Monday’s evidence from a number of former residents told of immense cruelty by ‘house parents’ who oversaw cottages housing up to 12 children at a time.
One witness alleged a girl who failed to properly tidy a kitchen was woken by house mother, Judy Fergusson, and stabbed multiple times on her hands with a can opener until she bled.
Children up to the age of 12 who wet the bed would be undressed and paraded in nappies in front of the other children, she said.
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