VICTIMS of abuse at Fairbridge Farm were notified yesterday how much they would receive as part of a $24 million compensation payout approved by the Supreme Court.
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The lawyer representing the litigants, Roop Sandhu of Slater and Gordon, said the complex claims process had been completed and involved 258 claimants.
He said, due to privacy issues, details of individual payouts would not be released.
“The survivors of Fairbridge have been waiting a lifetime to be heard and some were telling their stories for the first time during this assessment process,” Mr Sandhu said.
“Each individual was spoken to privately and separately, and was afforded as much time as necessary to ensure their claim was assessed thoroughly and accurately.”
Mr Sandhu hopes the Fairbridge case will make it easier for victims of historical child abuse who come forward in the future.
“We applaud recent moves by the NSW government to eliminate limitation defences in civil claims for child abuse survivors and it was also hugely meaningful that the Premier [Mike Baird] made a personal and written apology to every Fairbridge survivor who was part of the claim and unreservedly accepted responsibility on behalf of the State for the abuse they suffered as children,” he said.
However Mr Sandhu said there was still a long way to go towards acknowledging and atoning for decades of abuse.
“We are immensely proud and honoured to represent the former residents of Fairbridge in their courageous pursuit of justice, but we cannot help but think that there must be an easier way,” he said.
According to Mr Sandhu, without a national redress scheme, victims of historical child abuse will still need to go through costly and psychologically damaging litigation for their suffering to be acknowledged.
Hundreds of children, some as young as four, were sent from their homes in England to the Fairbridge Farm School in Molong, with the promise of a better life.
Mr Sandhu said many of the children suffered terrible sexual and physical abuse at Fairbridge Farm and had developed lifelong psychiatric and physical injuries as a result.
The class action, commenced in 2009, alleged the Fairbridge Foundation and the NSW and Commonwealth Governments allowed a system of institutional abuse to develop and persist at the farm school over many decades.
“The defendants continue to deny legal liability for the institutional child abuse that occurred at the Fairbridge Farm School,” Mr Sandhu said.
janice.harris@fairfaxmedia.com.au