AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM
DAVID MARK: Former residents of the Retta Dixon Children’s Home in Darwin have broken down on the stand while giving evidence to the child sexual abuse royal commission.
Retta Dixon Home was a home for mixed-race Indigenous children run from the 1940s to 1980 by a group of evangelical missionaries.
One witness today told the commission how the former race discrimination commissioner Tom Calma, was told a young boy was sexually abused in the 1970s, but that the allegations were not followed up.
The royal commission is investigating how the missionaries running the home, along with the NT Government and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, handled allegations of severe physical and sexual abuse.
And a warning, Will Ockenden’s story contains distressing details.
WILL OCKENDEN: It was a day packed with emotions, as witnesses at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse broke down in the witness box.
WITNESS: And the doors were locked. He sexually penetrated me. There was lots of blood. (Sobbing).
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