Students who were sexually and psychologically abused at a New South Wales school have won $24m in a settlement which will be the largest for survivors of mass child abuse in Australia’s legal history.
The class action was brought on by 150 former students of the central western NSW Fairbridge Farm school. The former students endured a six-year legal battle, with the action brought against the Fairbridge Foundation, the NSW government and the federal government.
Students who were abused at the school between 1938 and 1974 endured abuse that was “everything you could possibly imagine and some things you couldn’t; it was some truly sickening and horrifying things that went on”, according to Slater and Gordon class action lawyer Roop Sandhu. The firm took the case on a no-win, no-fee basis.
The school was mainly attended by migrant children who in some cases were wrongly told they were orphans. The types of abuse catalogued include sexual abuse and being beaten with hockey sticks, with one child spending three years in hospital when his back was broken at the school.
Victim Lynda Craig, who was sent to Fairbridge Farm school when she was five years old, said young girls and boys suffered “insurmountable hardship” that could be described as slavery.
“The [class action] result won’t keep the demons away from us but it will certainly make Fairbridge, the state and the commonwealth accountable for what occurred,” she said on Monday.
“From my point of view this is justice for the children of Fairbridge who were exposed to sexual predators, were exposed to mental abuse at the hands of unskilled workers and were sent out into the wide world with no social skills.”
David Hill, who attended Fairbridge but was not part of the class action and now acts as a spokesman for the victims, criticised the Fairbridge Foundation and the state and federal governments for dragging out the litigation.
“It’s outrageous that this thing has been bogged down by the defendants, by the Fairbridge Foundation, by the NSW government, by the federal government, by the supreme court – for seven years it hadn’t even got to trial,” he said.
“Eight of our friends, Fairbridge kids, have died in the process waiting for justice. But that aside, it’s a great day and it’s an enormous relief to all these Fairbridge kids that suffered so much.
“And it’s also, I think, a new benchmark and gives great hope to all the other kids in all the other institutions that were abused, that Fairbridge, if you like, has shown the way, the path for other kids to follow. So all in all, a great day.”
Sandhu used the win to call on the federal government to establish a national redress scheme for victims of institutional child sex abuse, saying they should be compensated without the need for litigation.
A settlement scheme will be devised in the NSW supreme court as part of the application being brought before it. Former Fairbridge residents will be notified of the compensation fund through a court-approved process.
The settlement avoids a trial which had been set down for two months later this year, and Fairbridge have agreed to make a full and unqualified apology.
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