First Nations elders have recounted the abuse they lived through while working as domestic servants and living in Queensland institutions. While giving evidence at the Truth and Healing Inquiry, they've remembered the stolen generations survivors and their families that didn't make it this far. A warning, this story contains distressing material.
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00:00Ducking to the outdoor toilet block of his boys' dormitory at night was a gamble for
00:07Waka Waka man Uncle David Ragg.
00:10Sherberg Boys Home, west of Brisbane, was a place where Uncle David says grown men could
00:15access on a whim.
00:17A place where bad things happened.
00:20I've been abused physically, sexually, mentally in the Sherberg Boys Home.
00:25The 66-year-old recounted to Queensland's Truth Inquiry how he was separated from his
00:30parents at nine years old.
00:32He survived on Weevil-riddled rations, was flogged for not eating his food, and didn't
00:37own his own clothing until after he finished high school.
00:41Uncle David Ragg is a survivor, but he says that so many of his brothers and sisters from
00:46the Sherberg Boys and Girls dormitories did not make it.
00:50He's thinking about them today and wants to acknowledge their family and respect them.
00:55He says that this Queensland Truth and Healing Inquiry is for them.
00:59The spirit of my people, my old people, my grandparents, my community of Sherberg, really
01:04has given me that resilience as well.
01:0695-year-old Ruth Hegarty vividly described by a video link being sent to work for non-Indigenous
01:12farming families when she was 14.
01:14She told the inquiry they were there to be used and abused by the government and their
01:19employers.
01:20She added that's why many girls, including herself, ended up pregnant.