Abuse claims at Darwin’s Retta Dixon Home go back 50 years

AUTHORITIES were alerted to missionaries sexually abusing ­Stolen Generation children at a Darwin home as early as 1966.

AUTHORITIES were alerted to missionaries sexually abusing ­Stolen Generation children at a Darwin home as early as 1966, when a carer was convicted of ­indecently assaulting three boys aged between 10 and 13.

Documents before the Royal Commission into Institutional ­Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ­reveal a litany of problems with the Retta Dixon Home inside Darwin’s Bagot Aboriginal reserve, ­beginning soon after it opened in 1946.

A “complete inquiry” commissioned in 1953 prompted the acting director of native affairs, R.K. McCaffery, to warn the NT administrator that missionaries at the RDH were “fanatical”, untrustworthy and that, in one case, boys had been indiscriminately beaten by a carer “gone berserk”.

In 1957, an NT bureaucrat told the federal Treasury secretary that the RDH was an unsuitable institution crippled by social problems. Another document, dated 1959, described girls expressing overt hostility and “repulsion” towards a superintendent who had a habit of touching them.

More documents from the early 1960s warned that staff lacked training and supervision, and their attitudes were “woefully lacking”. One describes children being beaten for “sex play”, and teachers from a nearby school reporting RDH kids with “far too much” sexual knowledge.

Then, in February 1966, three boys complained to police  they had been fondled by a missionary named Reginald ­Powell. It appears from the evidence put before the commission so far that the allegations were first investigated by a superintendent named Mervyn Pattemore.

“Powell inferred that the boys were lying to get their own back on him for disciplining them,” Pattemore said at the time. “I ­accepted his explanation against the children’s allegations because of his past clear record ... he has been an outstanding chap.”

Powell later pleaded guilty to three counts of indecent assault on young males and was sentenced to good behaviour in May 1966.

The commission has not so far revealed any record of a broader investigation into practices at the RDH following the Powell case.

A social worker’s report dated 1967 states that “it has been seven months since (the children) were seen”. The report describes one boy pulling a girl’s pants down and lying on top of her.

“Mr Pattemore went on to say that (the boy) had always been playing with other children’s and his own genitals,” the social worker wrote.

Former RDH residents have told hearings in Darwin they suffered vicious punishments and ­serial abuse that permanently scarred their lives.

The commission is inquiring into how it was that cases against another carer or “house parent”, convicted pedophile Donald ­Henderson, were dropped in 1975 and 2002. Henderson pleaded guilty to assaulting two boys at a Darwin pool in 1984. The case against him in 1975 was dropped due to “ineptitude”, the commission has heard. At one stage, in 2002, he faced more than 80 charges, but that case was also dropped.

Yesterday, the commission heard evidence the inaugural head of the NT police sex crimes unit had bungled his investigation by failing to properly interview witnesses or follow up leads.

The detective, Roger Newman, refused to concede the most serious allegations, but acknowledged he could have done more.