Group can't afford NT abuse compo: inquiry

THE Children Commissioner says child abuse has been under-reported in the Northern Territory because the administrative process was unclear.

A CHRISTIAN organisation that ran a Northern Territory home where numerous Aboriginal children were sexually abused says it can't afford to compensate its victims because that would mean curtailing its missionary work.

DARWIN'S Retta Dixon home was run by the Aborigines Inland Mission - now the Australian Indigenous Ministries, or AIM - from 1946 until 1980 when abuses were perpetrated by staff against resident mixed-race Aboriginal children who had been taken from their families.