Twenty years ago a young man gave evidence to Northern Territory Police investigating allegations the principal of his school had systematically abused children on the Tiwi Islands just to the north of Darwin.
Ten years later that evidence — supported by his oral evidence in court and a further supporting affidavit — was recalled in his application for compensation under the Northern Territory’s criminal compensation legislation. The evidence, which related to events when he was about 10 or 11 years old and a primary school student at the St Xavier Boys School at Nguiu, was harrowing and graphic: