Robert Barracluff: Daruk Training School staffer to stand trial
A fourth elderly former staffer of the notorious Daruk Training School near Penrith will face trial charged with 49 alleged child sex abuse offences.
The South Coast News
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An elderly former boys’ school welfare officer will face trial charged with 49 alleged child sex abuse offences following long-running investigations into appalling abuse allegations emerging from a brutal military school-style home for wards of the state and juvenile offenders.
Robert Barracluff, 76, was charged with 29 counts of indecently assaulting males, 14 counts of buggery, four counts of assaulting males with an act of indecency, one count of procuring an indecent act and one count of assault causing actual bodily harm allegedly during his employment at the now-closed Daruk Training School in Berkshire Park.
He was arrested at his Basin View home near South Nowra in 2018 and will now face trial at Downing Centre District Court from February 8 2021.
Police then described the allegations against Barracluff, which date from 1965 to 1985 at Daruk Training School, as serious and horrific.
Nepean Police Area Command began investigating complaints referred to them by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2016.
Daruk Training School opened in 1960 and closed in 1984, catering for boys aged 10 to 14.
Police said in March they had interviewed 80 former pupils that allegedly suffered sexual abuse at the school.
Home to hundreds of state wards and juvenile offenders, Daruk was allegedly run like a military camp.
Three other former officials from Daruk have already been charged, including Queensland man Brien Peckover, 67, and Frank Valentine, 77, a former boss of Parramatta Girls School.
Valentine was sentenced to at least 13 years’ jail in 2019 for child sex offences.
