AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Helen Davidson and agencies
@heldavidson
Wednesday 19 August 2015
Australian Indigenous Ministries failed to meet its obligations to protect children, including from sexual abuse, when it ran the Retta Dixon home for Aboriginal children and mothers in Darwin for more than 40 years, the child abuse royal commission has found.
The commission was unable to make a finding on whether the commonwealth government also failed in its obligations.
“However, a question remains as to whether in the circumstances the commonwealth should have taken remedial action to protect the residents of the home from sexual abuse,” it said.
The findings, released on Wednesday, were based on a public hearing held in Darwin in late 2014, which heard from men and women abused as children between 1947 and 1980 at the Retta Dixon home. The institution was established in 1946 “for half-caste children and mothers”.
Many who were taken to Retta Dixon under what was then Australian law now identify as members of the stolen generation.
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