SEPTEMBER 25, 2014
Amos Aikman
Northern Correspondent
Darwin
THE inaugural head of the Northern Territory police sex crimes unit bungled an investigation into allegations a convicted pedophile serially abused Stolen Generation children during his time as a carer at a Darwin missionary, a royal commission has heard.
Former detective Roger Newman began his investigation in the late 1990s after receiving a complaint alleging that former “house parent” Donald Henderson had committed at least 100 separate sexual acts on children while working at the Retta Dixon Home in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told Mr Newman took too long to discover that Mr Henderson had been convicted of similar offences in the 1980s as well as previously charged with abusing children at the RDH in 1975.
John Lawrence QC, acting for several alleged victims, suggested Mr Newman should have recognised that he was dealing with a potential serial child abuser and acted more swiftly. Mr Newman took 15 months to obtain a list of the children living at the home inside Darwin’s Bagot Aboriginal reserve during the period Mr Henderson worked there.
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