Lawyer Bill Piper is seeking compensation of around $360,000 each for 83 Stolen Generation members and other Aboriginal people who say they suffered abuse as children at Retta Dixon Home.
Mr Piper told NITV News his clients will “file for damages for personal injury as a consequence of physical and sexual abuse suffered while they were children.
“There were inadequate measures to protect children from abuse at the Retta Dixon Home while it was being administered by the Federal Government," he says.
The amount is much higher than the $65,000 recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which investigated allegations of child sexual abuse at the home, in 2014.
Mr Piper has qualified that the exact sum of compensation sought will depend on the nature of the abuse suffered by each individual.
The Commonwealth was responsible for sending Aboriginal children to Retta Dixon, a mission in Darwin that operated from 1946 to the 1980s.
The mission housed children who were forcibly removed from their families under Australia’s assimilation policies, or removed from their families to protect their welfare.
MORE TO COME.
