Royal Commission into child sex abuse to hear from Retta Dixon Home victims in Da

By Ellie Turner
NT News
September 22, 2014

http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/northern-territory/royal-commission-into-child-sex-abuse-to-hear-from-retta-dixon-home-victims-in-darwin/story-fnk0b1zt-1227066866186

Barbara Cummings was taken from her mother and lived at the old Retta Dixon Home, which will be the focus of the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse hearings starting in Darwin today.

BARBARA  Cummings is among thousands of victims of cultural genocide.

She was stolen from her mother at the mission-based Kahlin Compound and raised at the old Retta Dixon Home to be a laundry maid, discouraged from contact with the world outside­ the wire.

“I got terrible thrashings. we all did,” the grandmother said, remembering leather belts and a cane.

“We were separated from society.

“I always liken (missions) to the Amish – the only thing we didn’t have is the duke and the buggy.”

But some children had it worse.

The Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse will begin a public hearing in Darwin on Monday September 22, delving into the sinister past of stolen children at Retta Dixon from 1946-1980.

Some victims have given evidence before in a court proceeding about crimes committed against them.

This time no lawyers will sneer at their stories on cross examination – the experience of Peter Gunner, who was sexually abused at St Marys Hostel in Alice Springs, and Lorna Cubillo, who watched a boy get flogged so hard he wet himself at Retta Dixon, in their unsuccessful fight for stolen generations­ compensation.

Ms Cummings, 66, said the Royal Commission was vital for justice.

“The people giving evidence are extremely brave,” she said.

“This is our home town.”

The hearing will question laws and policies in modern child protection.

It will investigate authorities’ response­ to allegations against Donald Henderson and claims of child sex abuse against Australian Indigenous Ministries workers at the missionary-run compound on Bagot Rd.

Ms Cummings’ mum Nellie was plucked as a small child from Daly River and held at Kahlin.

She had to get permission to visit her daughter.

“I tried to run away (from the home) once but my legs wouldn’t take me anywhere,” Ms Cummings said.

She didn’t become a “fully fledged Christian”. Married at 17, she learnt how to buy groceries and worked in laundries until the Whitlam Government said Aboriginal people could be educated, and graduated as a social worker.

She ran the powerful stolen generations Going Home Conference in 1994. Ms Cummings established the now closed child welfare agency Karu, refused to attend Kevin Rudd’s national apology, and is one of the NT Government’s harshest critics in under-resourcing child protection.

Battling lung cancer, she said the Royal Commission might be her last stand as an activist.

“But I hope there is another hearing – Retta Dixon isn’t the end of it,” she said.