More evidence surfaces of abuse allegations on Nauru.

By MAMAMIA NEWS

Last week allegations were made about 33 cases of sexual assault and child abuse at the Nauru detention centre.

Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison announced an inquiry into these allegations. He also said it would look into allegations that charity workers had coached children into making complaints and self harm.

At a press conference on Friday, Minister Morrison, confirmed 10 employees of Save the Children, a non-government organisation contracted to provide welfare, education and protection for children on Nauru, had been told to leave the island.

Fairfax Media reported that Minister Morrison had said that the allegations of abuse on Nauru were of a “generalised nature” because they did not “provide details of the identities of the alleged victims or perpetrators or the dates and times of when events allegedly took place”.

But now the Guardian Australia has obtained from a number of sources, minutes of welfare meetings and a Transfield intelligence report, which detail some of the child protection and abuse concerns in Nauru camps.

The documents detail significant incidents of self harm, sexual harassment and children in sustained distress on specific dates, including:

• In the week beginning 2 June, A 16-year-old girl told her case workers she had been tormented and sexually harassed by detention centre security guards. The girl reported a number of male Nauruan employees “have tried to hug her, kiss her, told her they would marry her and asked her to have a ‘sexy party’”.
• In the week ending 13 April, several children, the youngest aged four year, who had had both parents arrested for taking part in protests, were left with no family to care for them.

Staff from Save the Children have also strenuously denied the Minister’s assertion that they encouraged detainees to self harm, protest or fabricate abuse allegations, claiming the Minister’s comments were “an insult to the work we do on the island”.

The chief executive of Save The Children, Paul Ronalds, rejected the minister’s allegations and said the government had not provided his organisation with any evidence of staff wrongdoing before the claim was leaked to the media, or since.

This is an ongoing story and Mamamia will be updating as most facts come to light.